


ghostwalks (gin and fog)

by diasterisms



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Relationship Status: Let's Not... But I can't resist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-06-17
Packaged: 2018-06-10 01:06:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 41,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6931657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diasterisms/pseuds/diasterisms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I don't like your manners," she sniffed.</p><p>"And I'm not crazy about yours," he retorted.</p><p>(So they were apparently Bogie and Bacall now, and maybe she could blame the alcohol in the morning, like all the good girls did.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sarajevo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EllieCarina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieCarina/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few months ago, [jackpotgirl](http://jackpotgirl.tumblr.com/) prompted me with: "They are co-stars on a TV show and Kylo is a bit of a bitch and they hate each other because of UST they can't act upon for whatever reasons (maybe because the network forbids relationships between leads) and they still shoot all these hot sex scenes and it's really infuriating/confusing." 
> 
> The request languished in my inbox for ages because I had no idea how to go about writing it, but! I have just spent the past two weeks living out of a hastily-packed suitcase in a seaside hotel and, while there, the pieces of the story clicked into place. So, here it finally is, Ellie, and I apologize for the long delay. It's not _exactly_ your prompt, but I hope it's satisfyingly close enough.
> 
> P.S. In an attempt to stick to canon as much as possible, the setting is Coruscant, California, not Los Angeles, and there is a nonbinary BB-8 who uses they/them/their pronouns.
> 
> P.P.S. Comments and suggestions would be much appreciated!

i.

 

She didn't so much as get into acting as have Teng Malar, the hotel's ancient groundsman, shove a casting call flyer into her hands while she helped herself to buffet leftovers in the kitchen with the rest of the maids.

 

"Why not?" Teng shrugged. "You've got the looks for it. Ain't seen eyes like yours since Audrey, girl."

 

The other maids giggled and dared her to go, just for the fun of it, and, _Why not, indeed,_ Rey thought, her mouth full of chicken terrine. She never backed down from a dare and everyone living within the central Coruscant radius wanted to be a star, anyway, what with that Hollywood sign shedding silver dreams from the omnipresent emerald hills. Might as well.

 

She went to the audition and the rest, as they say, is Tinseltown history. But what Rey didn't know was this— as she channeled Jakku, England's dust and bitterness into that scrappy survivor role while the casting director watched silently from the front row, Kylo Ren was ripping up his contract with First Order Studios in a boardroom full of aghast lawyers and executives, and then he was smiling tight-lipped with grim pleasure as he strode out of the industrial black steel complex, into the sunlight of a new life.

 

*

 

"Where are you staying?" Finn asked Rey while they sipped lattes at Maz's to celebrate impending fame and fortune. _We're gonna be on TV,_ he'd gushed to the severely unimpressed barista, who'd rolled her eyes but doodled a Sharpie star on each of their cups, anyway.

 

"Right now? Staff housing at the Death Star," Rey said, with an unabashed grin.

 

"No shit?" Finn cocked his head. "That's where Anakin Skywalker died."

 

"So I've heard." She licked away the sweet foam from her lips. "Mysterious circumstances, yeah?"

 

He snorted, leaned in closer if to impart some great secret. "As mysterious as cocaine overdose gets, sure. You know who was with him when he kicked the bucket?"

 

"No."

 

"I used to be a limo driver. You hear things. Christopher Walken and Robert De Niro were with him, in that room. All three of them going doo-doo on the happy dust."

 

"Scandalous."

 

Finn nodded, and then changed the topic. "You can stay with me, if you like. My roommate, Slip— he's moving back East, and I need someone to cover his half of the rent."

 

Rey agreed, because apartment rates were off the charts and, while she'd only met Finn at the first round of auditions, he had kind, definitely-not-a-serial-killer eyes. They sealed the deal with a latte toast, and, meanwhile, Kylo Ren was taking a call from someone he hadn't spoken to in years as his Bugatti TIE aimlessly cruised the Coruscant streets.

 

"Ben," said his uncle, "I need a villain for my new show. Interested?"

 

*

 

Rey didn't normally dress up, but, for the kickoff party, she'd squeezed herself into her nicest skinny jeans and a pair of thrift-shop boots. There would be press at the reception, so she'd done the best she could with a mascara wand and a tube of sparkly peach-hued lip gloss.

 

"Might want to contract a stylist for events," Poe Dameron advised her, smiling to take the sting out of his words.

 

"Good idea," she mumbled, a little tongue-tied because it wasn't even a decade ago when Poe was stealing hearts all across the globe with his portrayal of some bedroom-eyed dreamboat on one of the most successful teen dramas since _Dawson's Creek._ Now he was throwing in his lot with her and Finn as the protagonists of Luke Skywalker's much-awaited take on young adult dystopia.

 

"Here comes Big Bad," Finn announced, and Rey turned to look at the doorway— as did everyone else. Some people had that effect on any given room.

 

Kylo Ren was tall and lean, with a mane of unruly dark hair and full lips that were, as many a celebrity feature had gushed, _made for kissing._ He bore no physical resemblance to his movie-star grandfather, but his gaze was just as intense— just as magnetic— as Anakin's had been, from what Rey remembered of old films and interview clips. That gaze met hers as he perused the crowd, and she felt a strange current run between them— some crazy electric-charged jolt that made her look away as quickly as if she'd been burned.

 

"Heard he split with First Order Studios," Poe was gossiping to Finn. "Walked out right in the middle of filming _Starkiller,_ 'cause of _creative differences."_

 

"They probably served his Kona Deep a degree too warm," Finn sniped. He'd driven that limo for Snoke, and he'd been regaling Rey with all the dirt on Kylo ever since they found out he was their newest castmate. He was notorious for on-set tantrums and partying _way_ too hard— although, there had been that stint at Passages, hadn't there, according to the tabloids, and he was supposedly clean now—

 

It was an odd sensation, to be in the same room with someone and already have the gritty pieces of their life mapped out in the pop culture center of your brain. By the time Rey chanced another look at Kylo, he had his back to her and he was talking to someone she didn't know. Bereft of those striking eyes, she could concentrate instead on his broad shoulders, accentuated by a tailored charcoal jacket, and his slim hips, and then, oh, _God,_ she was checking out her co-star's ass in thousand-dollar dress pants.

 

"So, Finn tells me you used to housekeep at that hotel off of Endor?"

 

It took Rey a few seconds to realize that Poe was talking to her, and another few seconds to notice that Finn had wandered away to chat with the crew. She nodded, willing her cheeks not to flush red. "The Death Star, yeah."

 

"Ever housekept the chalet Anakin Skywalker died in?"

 

"They won't tell us which one it is."

 

Poe chuckled. "Figures they wouldn't. You know who he was with that night?"

 

"No. Who?" Rey said, gamely.

 

"Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman. The studios covered it up, of course."

 

"Of course."

 

*

 

Luke gave a brief welcome speech, accepting the round of cheers with a solemn yet cautiously optimistic expression on his weathered face. _Awakening_ was his big comeback; he'd spent the last five years in seclusion on a tiny island called Ahch-To, somewhere in the Mediterranean, after the shocking cancellation of his long-running political thriller, _Empire._ He introduced the cast one by one, for formality's sake, and Rey couldn't quite help the ridiculous grin that threated to split her face in half at being referred to as "our Daisy." Flanked by Finn and Poe, she leaned against the wall and basked in the applause. Not bad for a former dreg of the Jakku foster system. She _had_ to be dreaming.

 

Kylo didn't clap, but his dark eyes lingered on her long after Luke had moved on to the other cast members. Every time her gaze drifted to him, he was already watching, holding her attention from across the room. It was tense and— shockingly exhilarating, this series of stolen glances, like two satellites in orbit or maybe battle lines being drawn, and Rey had no idea how to flirt so she finally just... _shrugged_ at him. It was an _I don't know what we're doing, do you?_ kind of shrug. He started a bit, and then he looked away, but not before she caught his lips curving in a vague approximation of a smile.

 

After more speeches by various studio heads and people attached to the show, everyone was ushered to a hall where long buffet tables groaned beneath all manner of delicacies. Rey and Finn dove in like animals while Poe hung back, torn between amusement and dismay.

 

"This cheese," Rey declared, cheeks bulging, "is the heavenliest thing I've ever put in my mouth."

 

"Try it with the pastrami," Finn urged, nudging her in the direction of the cold cuts.

 

Poe squinted at the half-decimated cheese wheel on the table. "Oh, yeah, Brillat-Savarin's great," he said, nodding. "My favorite Brie. It's so creamy because of the white mould they use—"

 

Finn discreetly spat into a paper napkin, while Rey's brow scrunched as she tried to decide whether or not she was grossed out by the concept of eating what was basically rotten food. Nah, she wasn't. She'd braved worse back in Jakku, and none of her dumpster dives had ever yielded anything _this_ delicious.

 

She was about to go for seconds while Finn and Poe bounded to the dessert table, when Kylo suddenly loomed over her like a... great big looming thing.

 

"Allow me to properly introduce my nephew," said Luke. Kylo hadn't gone through the usual string of callbacks and chemistry tests— some people were crying nepotism, but Luke called it a leap of faith. "Rey, this is Ben."

 

_Ben?_ she was about to ask, before she remembered that _Kylo Ren_ was a stage name. "Hi," she said instead, trying to sound as congenial as possible. She'd never been much of a social butterfly, but it was probably time to start practicing. "It's nice to meet you."

 

Kylo stared at her as if she'd punched him in the gut. Luke suddenly broke into a grin. "That's right— the accent! I'd forgotten." To a very confused Rey, he explained, "Ben's teenage obsession was Rachel Weisz in _The Mummy."_

 

"Uncle," Kylo said through gritted teeth, "shut up."

 

Luke was still chortling as he walked away, leaving his two stars to get acquainted. Or, more precisely, to shuffle their feet awkwardly at each other.

 

"Evelyn Carnahan, huh?" Rey's attempt at levity only earned her the scowl that had been immortalized in many a First Order blockbuster. Up close, Kylo's eyes were lighter than she'd previously thought— a gold-flecked, almost toffee-hued shade of brown. He wasn't conventionally handsome, but the blend of sharp features with that pale, beauty-marked complexion was _striking,_ and that generous mouth ensured a one-way ticket to hell. If Poe Dameron was a dreamboat, then Kylo Ren was the kind of dream you told no one about, not even your priest.

 

"This is your first gig," he said, slowly. "Correct?"

 

"Er, yes." _Smooth, Rey._ "Will that be a problem?" she challenged, because his reputation as an asshole preceded him and she was familiar with the sort of industry speculation that surrounded a big-budget show headlined by unknowns. She was _not_ sleeping with the casting director, thank you very much.

 

The hurt that flickered across his expressive face made her think that perhaps she'd read his intentions wrong. However, just as she was starting to feel guilty, he rallied with a sneer. "I don't know if I'm comfortable working with someone so inexperienced," he mocked, and whatever attraction she'd felt for him evaporated like mist in the morning.

 

"At least I actually tried out for my part," she retorted. "Must be nice to have _connections."_

 

She flounced away, and it wasn't very Scarlett O'Hara because she was in jeans and her mouth tasted like mouldy cheese, but she managed the outrage just fine, in her opinion.

 

*

 

"I mean, he _is_ playing the villain," Poe said later that night, in the apartment that Rey now shared with Finn, after they'd invited him over for milkshakes and Cards Against Humanity. "He's a method actor, y'know? Like his grandfather."

 

Rey pursed her lips as she tipped the box of black and white cards onto the table. "Should I expect a live rat in the mail, then?"

 

Finn burst out laughing. "I don't think _Adam_ and _Daisy_ are going to have a Joker/Harley Quinn kind of relationship, so you're probably safe from the Leto-esque antics."

 

"God. Leto." Poe shook his head. "Sometimes I just want to take him by the shoulders and ask him if he's okay."

 

"Could you _reach_ Jared Leto's shoulders?" Rey asked, doubtfully.

 

Poe flicked a straw at her.

 

*

 

Before he became Kylo Ren, he was Ben Organa-Solo, the New York senator's son, and never was Rey more reminded of this than when they were doing promotions for _Awakening._ He showed up in custom-made suits, unperturbed by the sea of blinding flashes, and he answered the most treacherous questions with enviable diplomatic ease.

 

"Kylo," said a reporter from _Astral!,_ "there are rumors that First Order let you go because you relapsed. Care to comment?"

 

"They're just that— rumors," he smoothly replied. "I left First Order because it was high time to take my career in a different direction."

 

Before the reporter could follow up, Kylo turned away to murmur something in Rey's ear. She was _sort of_ accustomed to this by now, him using her— or the nearest available castmate— as a shield, although the first time he'd done it, she'd almost elbowed him out of her personal space before he snapped at her to _"just go with it."_ Cameras went off and people aww'ed, because he had to bend down so that his lips could brush against her ear while his large hand spanned the small of her back. He smelled like sandalwood with a hint of vanilla, and maybe it was the lights but she could swear that the look on his face was almost soft as he gazed at her.

 

He usually asked her random, inane questions at times like these. Tonight, he said, "So, tell me, how does a British girl end up in Hollywood, California?"

 

"My birth mother found me when I was seventeen and brought me across the pond." She had to concentrate on her answer; his breath was warm and the low rumble of his voice did _things_ to her stomach. "Omaha, to be exact, but there was nothing to keep me there when she passed away a couple of years ago." Telling this story was old hat by now, and she waited for the inevitable grating sympathy or the awkwardly abrupt change in topic— she was never sure which of the two she resented more.

 

Instead, Kylo merely observed, "You kept your accent."

 

Rey's grin was surprised, but genuine. "What can I say? I'm stubborn."

 

Another reporter called her attention, and Kylo dutifully let her go. A mic was thrust into her face. "Rey, could you tell us more about your character on _Awakening?"_

 

"Um, sure." She nervously smoothed down the front of the skin-tight green dress that her stylist had insisted on putting her in, and she wondered if the fish-out-of-water feeling would ever go away. "Daisy's a young, impetuous girl who lives in a dystopian future where love is considered a disease. _Amor deliria nervosa._ When people in this world turn eighteen, they undergo a form of brain surgery that takes away their capacity to love— transforms them into emotionless robots, basically. Daisy's life is turned upside down when she falls in love with John— that's Finn's character— a month before her eighteenth birthday." She was doing nothing more than reciting a _Cliff's Notes_ version of the first season's storyline, but the reporter nodded in encouragement. "So she has this whole crisis of faith, on whether she should, uh, remain in the good graces of society, or, you know, fight for her love. It's all very dramatic and romantic, and it opens up all sorts of questions about— about how you could feel something so strongly for someone that it makes everything else— all the risk and the hardship— worth it."

 

"And do _you_ think love is worth everything?" the reporter asked, slyly.

 

Rey blinked. Kylo was watching her out of the corner of his eye. "I wouldn't know," she said at last. "I've never been in love. But I do know about survival and fighting for the things that matter, and how it can be difficult to strike a balance between the two. It's that conflict that I'm looking forward to bringing to the role."

 

Poe made his grand entrance just then, and Rey heaved a sigh of relief as the reporters flocked to him. "Think he bought my bullshit?" she joked to Kylo.

 

"Don't sell yourself short like that," was his terse reply. "There's no need to be cute— it was a good answer. You don't have to pretend that it didn't mean anything to you."

 

It was a compliment, but also _not._ And, just like that, she was annoyed with him again.

 

ii.

 

_Wilhuff Tarkin said it best, I think. The year was 1990 and real-time computer graphics had just made their big debut in, of all things,_ Robocop 2. _Silicon Valley was ecstatic, Hollywood was abuzz, and the Oscar-winning director (_ Wrath of God, _1972;_ Strike Fear, _1979) and I were holed up in his favorite bar— The Carrion Spike on Monument Plaza— lamenting evolution and the end of the old world._

 

_For some reason, the talk veered to Tarkin's most infamous protege, who had been discovered in rigor mortis by the housekeeping staff at the exclusive Death Star a few months prior. "If ego is what makes men miserable, then he was surely one of the most miserable men of all time," Tarkin declared around the cheroot between his lips. "He was a wild animal— but, where a beast would have claws, he had talent. And his talent mauled many."_

 

_This damning praise hardly comes as a shock. No movie star within the last century has polarized Hollywood and film buffs so much— has inspired such equal heights of revulsion and awe— as the late Anakin Skywalker._

 

*

 

"Code Red!" BB hissed at Rey the moment she entered the narrow corridor of dressing rooms at Resistance Studios. " _Finding Emo,_ incoming!"

 

Rey groaned, with more resignation than actual surprise. She'd expected as much ever since she opened Lor San Tekka's article over her breakfast muesli. "How bad is it?"

 

"Not that bad yet," BB replied, clutching a manila folder labeled _SCRIPT - POE DAMERON_ to their ample chest. "Some shouting, and he thumped the wall at one point, but none of the interns have quit so far."

 

"Give it time," Rey dryly advised "Are Finn and your boss here yet?" Finn had spent the night at Poe's— had been doing so constantly for the past month— and Rey was happy for them, even though she lived in a perennial state of anxiety that the paps might catch on to this whirlwind romance and tear it to shreds.

 

BB nodded. They were half a foot shorter than Rey, with orange-framed cat eye glasses and a head of cropped auburn hair. "Got in fifteen minutes ago. The two of them are laying low, and so should you."

 

"I _can't._ We're shooting a pivotal scene today. We need to rehearse."

 

BB clucked their tongue in sympathy. There was a muffled shattering sound from up ahead, and one of the doors creaked open as a tall, icy blonde strode out into the hallway, an inscrutable expression on her face.

 

"He broke a mirror," she explained to BB and Rey. "I think it's time to raise the alert level to _Tantrum At Tiffany's."_

 

"Oh, Phasma," sighed BB, "why don't you just quit?"

 

"And leave all this?" Phasma's lips quirked in tandem with another crash from the dressing room that she had just departed. "I've been his personal assistant since First Order Studios. Anyone else would murder him."

 

"So?" BB prompted.

 

"So I'd hate to inadvertently be the reason some poor sod goes to jail. The last time I checked, _'because he was an asshole'_ doesn't hold up well in court." Phasma then gave Rey a brisk nod. "He's asking for you."

 

"Wonderful," Rey muttered. "Catch the two of you later, then."

 

Kylo reminded Rey of the animal that Tarkin said his grandfather had been when she stepped into his dressing room. He was prowling about, restless and wild-eyed, fists clenched at his sides and lips pulled back in a snarl. There was a copy of today's issue of the _Coruscant Times_ on his desk, ripped in uneven halves, and she didn't need a closer look to know that the newspaper had been opened to the feature article commemorating the Anakin Skywalker retrospective which would deck the Imperial Theatre's gallery for a month.

 

He stilled in his tracks once he registered her presence, but it was the stillness of a creature poised to leap. Or, perhaps, to flee. "You're late," he ground out.

 

"Filming doesn't start for another three hours," she blithely reminded him.

 

"Immaterial. I told you to be here at seven sharp so we could go over today's scene."

 

"I'm here now, aren't I?" She eyed the shards of mirror littering the carpeted floor. "Although, I refuse to work with you if you're in one of your moods."

 

"Rogers' heavily beaded sleeve smacked Astaire in the jaw and eye while they were filming _Follow the Fleet,_ but he stuck it out until the end of the take," Kylo said, flippantly. " _You_ can put up with a grumpy co-star during rehearsal."

 

"We are _not_ Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire," Rey snapped. "For one thing, they could actually tolerate each other."

 

"Perhaps that was an erroneous comparison," Kylo mumbled. "I can tolerate you just fine. It's your dancing I have problems with." And she just _knew_ that he was referring to the day that she, Finn, and Poe had flailed around like headless chickens when someone put on "Greased Lightnin'" during a break on set. Kylo hadn't joined in, because he was a spoilsport.

 

_"It's your dancing I have problems with,"_ she mocked, in what she felt was a passable depiction of his snippy tone.

 

"Cut it out." He glared at her. "You know I hate it when you do that."

 

"Mortensen broke a couple of toes when he kicked that helmet in _The Two Towers,_ but he powered through the scene," Rey said, giving Kylo a taste of his own medicine. " _You_ can put up with my stunningly accurate impersonations."

 

"Hilarious." But the verbal sparring seemed to have taken the edge off of his temper, because the look on his narrow face was almost contrite as he hunkered down in the nearest chair, bending to prop his elbows on his spread knees and clasping his hands together. "Shall we get to it, then?"

 

The only other chair in the room had been overturned. Rey shot Kylo a pointed glance while she set it to rights; he responded with a vague smirk, which quickly faded into a frown when she sat and rooted around in her oversized tote for her copy of the script.

 

"How do you not have a PA yet?" he demanded.

 

"Unlike you, I know how to fetch my own coffee."

 

"That soy milk abomination of yours is _not_ coffee."

 

Her wandering fingers froze inside her tote. "You remember my order?"

 

"Piss off."

 

She studied his flushed cheeks, and the agitation with which he raked through his thick dark hair. They'd bumped into each other at Maz's last weekend, passed the time in queue by bickering through the amiable, paparazzi-ready smiles on their faces while standing far apart enough to make it clear that they were _not_ grabbing coffee together. JustJarJar.com had obliged by burying their tamely-captioned photos in the weekly roundup.

 

Eventually, she found her script, and the next hour was spent reading lines with him. She could almost like him when he was like this— focused and intense, nudging her along with clipped little pointers and helpful insights into character motivation. "More defiance," he'd grunt, or, "My uncle will have the final word, but I think you should angle your face to the camera just _so."_ He was a gifted actor, she had to admit that, and his resemblance to Anakin grew more obvious with each passing day. Sometimes the fluorescent lighting would halo around him, and she'd find herself thinking of his grandfather trapped beneath the glare of a dozen choppers in _Wrath of God._ Anakin had won an Oscar for that movie, at the age of twenty-five. Kylo was pushing thirty now, with no major awards to his name. Probably why he had such a chip on his shoulder in the first place.

 

An assistant scurried in to rush the two of them off to makeup and wardrobe, and then Luke was calling for quiet on set as Rey sat with wrists and ankles strapped to a metal chair while Kylo stood over her in his black mask and the equally black regalia that made him look a little like a scarecrow. Suddenly, she wasn't Rey anymore— she was Daisy, burgeoning rebel fighter captured by the evil government, separated from her friends and John, the love of her life.

 

"Where are the others?" She injected the right amount of tremor into her question, a hint of barely-concealed apprehension in an otherwise steely tone.

 

"You mean the murderers, traitors, and thieves you call friends?" Kylo— no, _Adam—_ rasped through the voice modulator. "You'll be relieved to hear I have no idea."

 

It was a harrowing scene. He played his part as interrogator eerily well, relentless, threatening, and, with that mask on, it was impossible to believe that he was the same person who remembered how she took her coffee. By the time he leaned in close and she turned her face away, the sheen of tears that the script required her to produce at this point was dangerously close to real.

 

"Cut!" Luke declared. "Sorry, guys, that was great, but the lighting's a bit off. Can we throw more shadow over here, please?"

 

"I mean, you could fix that in post-production—" one of the assistants started to say, but was quickly hushed. Luke Skywalker had a _thing_ about light. It was common opinion that no other director had ever understood chiaroscuro and used it to such great effect since Hitchcock himself.

 

Kylo didn't move away from her as the technicians hurried to cater to Luke's preferences. Rey could feel his stare even through the mask.

 

"It's me," he told her, quietly. "I'm under here."

 

She huffed out a breath, embarrassed by her own weirdness. "That doesn't make me feel any better," she griped, even though it did.

 

*

 

_In his interviews, Anakin Skywalker always spoke with the blazing language of a decadent poet, providing fascinating views on situations that he screwed up through his pathological behaviors. He was scorchingly honest about his innermost torments and how his oversized feelings color-saturated his world. He was a self-taught actor who practiced merciless disciplines on himself; Tarkin once described him climbing into a closet and doing strenuous vocal exercises for ten hours in a row._

 

_"At a performance, everything works out on its own," Anakin said in 1973. "I've solved the mystery— you have to submit in silence. Open up, let go. Let anything penetrate you, even the most painful things. You mustn't let scar tissue form on your wounds; you have to keep ripping them open in order to turn your insides into a marvelous instrument that is capable of anything. All this has its price."_

 

_And the price that he paid was indeed high. In the brutish two years spent shooting_ Dark Lord— _the movie that would cement his place in Hollywood history as one of the greats— Anakin fell out with his long-time friend and mentor, Sir Obi-Wan Kenobi of Olivier fame, and Ahsoka Tano, who played his younger sidekick in_ Twilight of the Apprentice, _still considered one of the finest action-dramas ever made_ . _By the time filming on_ Dark Lord _wrapped, Anakin's pregnant wife— the distinguished former senator Padme Amidala— had left him as well. Months later, Amidala died of postpartum complications after entrusting her twin children to the illustrious Organa political dynasty._

 

_At the time of this writing, it is still unknown whether Anakin ever met his son or his daughter, both now equally famous in their own right. Senator Leia Organa-Solo and Luke Skywalker— who caused quite a stir when he chose to use his father's last name— have always been tight-lipped on the subject. In this, they take after Anakin himself, who was uncharacteristically mum whenever asked about the horrific end of his marriage to Amidala. To inquiries of this nature, he would reply simply with: "Creation is violent."_

 

iii.

 

It was a red-carpet event for the premiere night of Gial Ackbar's latest movie, _Martyrs._ "As if the man needs anymore Best Director awards," Luke had good-naturedly grumbled.

 

Rey arrived with Finn, who was still giddy about being chauffeured in a limo instead of driving one, and they posed for lots of pictures because they were playing star-crossed lovers on TV— although, in her opinion, he and Poe weren't the least bit subtle about all the eye-sex they kept having, but maybe that was just because she knew. Poe had arrived with Jessika Pava, who played Rey's best friend on the show, but Kylo came alone. After the requisite group shots, the photographers asked for a picture of _Adam_ and _Daisy,_ villain and heroine, and they automatically obliged, Kylo's hand drifting to the small of Rey's back as usual.

 

"Could you scratch a little higher, please?" she muttered under her breath.

 

"What?" he hissed, bewildered.

 

"Sequins," she explained, smiling as the flashes went off. "Itchy, itchy sequins."

 

"For God's sake." But he did as she asked, his fingers running up the base of her spine and discreetly digging into the beaded material of her silver gown. A hum of pleasure escaped from her lips, and he froze for a long, slow moment, before continuing his ministrations.

 

"Kylo!" a reporter shouted. "Is there any truth to the rumors that Senator Organa-Solo used her influence to bar First Order from suing you for breach of contract?"

 

He pretended not to hear, turning to Rey with masterful timing and another one of those random inquiries that he saved for these situations. "What's your favorite color?" he murmured in her ear.

 

"Yellow," she answered.

 

He seemed revolted. "What, like mustard?"

 

"No!" She wrinkled her nose at him. "Like afternoon light. You know, that end-of-day moment when everything's lazy and glowing."

 

"So, like the Coldplay song."

 

"That's a brilliant way to put it, actually," she said, the cameras forgotten as she craned her neck to look at him.

 

"You don't have to sound so surprised." His eyes were tawny in the splintering radiance of the white-hot flashbulbs, and his voice was a languid drawl as his hand trailed across her spine. "I _am_ brilliant."

 

"Way to ruin the moment, Kylo."

 

"The end-of-day moment?" he teased.

 

She couldn't storm off without next day's tabloids making some big deal about how the stars of _Awakening_ hated each other, so she seethed in silence instead.

 

*

 

At the post-viewing reception, Rey found herself cornered against the punch bowl by some slick-looking executive type with a gravity-defying pompadour, who introduced himself as Elan.

 

"I read online that you used to be in hotel housekeeping," he said, nibbling on a tomato-and-mozzarella skewer.

 

Rey managed a polite smile. "Yes, at the Death Star."

 

"Isn't that where Anakin Skywalker...?"

 

"So I've been told."

 

Elan nodded. "He wasn't alone, when he died. There were a couple of other people, but, of course, they hightailed it out of there. They were both big-shot directors— you don't need names. I found out about it when I was making the last _Indiana Jones_ film."

 

Rey sincerely doubted that this man was Steven Spielberg in disguise, but Jessika came swooping in to rescue her from the awkward silence. "We're doing shots!" she said enthusiastically, dragging Rey over to where Finn, Kylo, and Poe were clustered at the other end of the hall. "That Elan guy is so full of shit, don't listen to him. He was just a junior studio accountant on _Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,_ for crying out loud. Talking like it was _his_ movie. Douchebag."

 

In the midst of Jessika's rant, Rey noticed that Kylo was holding a champagne flute filled with sparkling apple cider instead of alcohol, and he wore the put-upon expression of somebody who had been content in his own private bubble before his castmates descended on him. His features relaxed slightly as she drew near— no doubt he was contemplating how best to pick on her this time. She ignored him, for the most part, as she downed tequila with her other co-stars and gasped through the wicked burn in her throat, and then one of the roving journalists sauntered up to their group with voice recorder in hand.

 

"Hey, Kylo, have you checked out the Imperial Theatre's Anakin Skywalker retrospective yet?" the man asked.

 

Finn, Jessika, Poe, and Rey held a collective breath. Kylo's grip tightened around the stem of his champagne flute. "Not yet."

 

"Do you think Anakin would be proud of the work that you, his only grandchild, have done so far? Considering that your own films, while box-office hits, have been critically panned, and _Awakening_ isn't exactly an HBO drama—"

 

It was the kind of cruel, needless question that all these damned gossip rags lived for, and the champagne flute shattered in Kylo's fist. All around them, conversations faltered and heads turned as cider drops and glass shards fell to the floor in sparkling rivulets, and then Kylo was leaving the hall in swift, angry strides.

 

With a satisfied smile, the journalist melted back into the crowd before Rey could succumb to the urge to punch him. Poe reached for his phone. "Hello, Phasma? We're at the _Martyrs_ event, but your boss just exited, stage right. What? Alert level?" He paused for a moment, deep in thought. "Hmm. Probably _Guess Who's Coming To Dinner? Not My Grandfather..._ Yeah, Phas, it's _that_ bad."

 

*

 

Rey found Kylo before Phasma or anyone else did, and she had no idea how that could have happened. It wasn't like she had a mental Waze fix on him _(turn left to avoid emotional traffic jam)._ It didn't seem at all likely that, by leaving the premiere and wandering for a few blocks on three-inch Louboutins— _"the lowest heels I could find that still matched your gown,"_ her stylist had insisted— she would stumble upon Kylo in the little dark green park on Monument Plaza. But there he was, slouched inelegantly on a stone bench, his moonlit eyes flickering to her as she teetered towards him. It was fate, or fate's closest cousin, similar to the way they couldn't keep their gazes from colliding at that kickoff party long ago. Maybe there was always this one person you would meet, and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the two of you were meant for something, in another life. In whatever life.

 

"My feet are killing me," Rey grumped.

 

Kylo shifted, and she sank down into the space that he made for her beside him, the sequins of her skirt scraping cold metallic rustles against stone, brushing up one side of his black trousers. She started to bend down, but he beat her to it, his head bowed over her knees as he gently undid the intricate clasps of her shoes. Rey's fingers twitched from how much they longed to card through his soft-looking hair, so she primly folded her hands on her lap, instead. He slid off her right shoe first, and, as blood rushed beneath the white lines that the thin, tight straps had cut into her flesh, she bit back a moan of relief. The strangled whimper of sound made his lean frame tense, made him compulsively stroke the pad of his thumb over the slim bone of her ankle. It was a soothing gesture, and stirring, and dangerous, because it should not have come from him.

 

He switched his attentions to her left shoe, and it wasn't until both her feet were bare and lifted a few inches off the damp grass as she wiggled sensation back into her toes that she remembered—

 

"Kylo, your _hand."_

 

He straightened up. "'Tis but a flesh wound.'"

 

"I hate to break it to you, but we're not in a _Monty Python_ sketch."

 

"What are you talking about? That's from _The Goon Show."_

 

It was her turn to be baffled. "What the hell is _The Goon Show?"_

 

"That fifties BBC radio programme?" he prompted. "With Peter Sellers? That was one of Cleese and company's major influences. In fact, the quote from _Holy Grail_ is actually 'Tis but a scratch,' followed by 'It's just a flesh wound' a little while later. Everyone remembers it wrong. Like how we all think the evil queen in _Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs_ says, 'Mirror, mirror on the wall,' when what she really says is ' _Magic_ mirror on the wall...'"

 

"Focus," Rey told him, not unkindly. "Give me your hand."

 

There was blood, but less than expected. Kylo had gotten lucky. She salvaged a kerchief from her evening clutch and tied it around his hand, watched faint red stains gradually bloom beneath the surface of the white cotton, like tiny roses on a field of snow. "You ought to get this properly disinfected and bandaged. There might be some glass left in there, too."

 

"I'll live," he mumbled. He did not move his hand; it hovered in the air above her thigh, his fingers outstretched as if he were offering her these strange blurred flowers growing on his palm. "But I'm sick of playing nice with the vultures."

 

"You didn't used to." She carefully placed his injured hand on his lap, pressing on the wrist once in a silent command to keep still. "You always ran your mouth off at interviews." He had been just a name to her, once. A face in a magazine, on a movie poster. There was a time when she hadn't known that he messed up his hair when he was nervous, that his eyes were more gold than brown in the right kind of light, that end-of-day light that she loved so much.

 

Kylo smirked, the self-deprecating twist of lips that had been Anakin's whenever he spoke of demons, before dying too young and in such indignity. "I know everyone's waiting for me to fuck it all up. Get caught doing lines in the bathroom, or whatever, and, yeah, San Tekka's article threw me for a loop. It's painful, seeing your family's skeletons put on display like that by some old fart who's been shoving his nose into everyone's business since fucking forever. But I'm trying, I truly am, to avoid giving the show any bad press. This is Uncle Luke's project. I don't want to ruin that for him. I've already been— not the best of nephews, in the past. Or, if truth be told, the best of sons." He sighed, and Rey could tell that there was more to this story, but it was lost to the night, you could carry only so many things at once when you just had two hands— one of which, to take the metaphor further, was currently bleeding through your castmate's kerchief.

 

"So this is, like, your redemption arc," she teased.

 

"Very funny." His tone was deadpan, with no real heat behind it, but her joke missed by a mile and accidentally crashed into something serious, as what always happened around him when she wasn't being careful. "I had to attend Sabbath school for a month, you know. When I was eight."

 

"No kidding?" She slanted her chin up towards him and liked this new angle, liked looking at his chiseled profile sideways against a shimmering net of stars. "Why?"

 

"The nanny quit," he grunted, and she _had_ to snort at that. "The only people Mother could find to watch me on weekends were our next-door neighbors. Nice Seventh-Day Adventist family, with, like, a good dental plan. I don't know. That's what I remember most about them— their teeth. Anyway—" He cleared his throat. "There was this one time when the Sabbath school teacher made us kids draw what we thought a sinner looked like. I drew a stick figure on its knees, praying. And then I saw what I drew— _really_ saw it— and I asked myself, where was the sin in this? Why did my mind immediately jump to penitence, instead of the act itself?" He shrugged, a bit impatiently. A bit impatient with himself. "What I'm _trying_ to say is— the thing about redemption, it's only an aftermath. It's a satisfying end to a story, but it doesn't erase everything that came before."

 

Rey felt like she was in an old movie, with the world all black and white like this, with the streets stretched out before her and the Catalina ironwoods draped in shadow, a suit-clad man's deep voice fading wistfully into the air. She supposed it was one of the hazards of working in Hollywood— the glamour clung, like a stubborn sheen, to the grime of everywhere. Maybe Clark Gable had sat on this very bench. Maybe Irene Dunne and Loretta Young had shared a smoke beneath one of these trees. You couldn't ignore it, the sense of history, the echoes of silver screen ghosts who had been larger than life. It was all right _here,_ mapped on the face of someone who, at times, looked like Anakin Skywalker.

 

"What you just said," she told Kylo, "that was good. Fantastic, even."

 

The glance that he ventured in her direction seemed oddly shy. "Yeah?"

 

"Better than anything your grandfather ever came up with," Rey confirmed.

 

Kylo laughed. It was rusty and short-lived, quickly muffled behind his lips as if he didn't think he had any right to the sound. "Yes, all right," he hummed.

 

She nudged his shoulder. "Here's looking at you, kid."

 

He shook his head, almost vehemently. "We are _not_ Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman."

 

"We aren't?"

 

"No." He nudged her shoulder right back. "For one thing, you have eyes like Audrey Hepburn's."

 

She had to turn away so that he wouldn't see her smile, and this quiet little stir in her heart, _God,_ it felt like the next big thing.

 

*

 

_"When I heard that he had died, I had a moment of grief that lasted about five minutes," Ahsoka Tano calmly remarked in a 1995 interview. "It was very intense, and then it never happened again. Not because I forced myself to stop, but— well, I think it was because he had simply caused too much pain. It burned away everything else that came after."_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fic title is based on Victorian-era theatrical slang from [this list](http://mentalfloss.com/article/68089/30-words-and-phrases-victorian-theatrical-slang): "the ghost walks" means that salaries are about to be handed out, and "gin and fog" refers to an actor's hoarseness caused by heavy drinking from the night before.
> 
> The repeated theme of who was with Anakin Skywalker in the hotel room when he died (and much of the dialogue surrounding it) is brazenly lifted from "The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories" by Neil Gaiman, as applied to the passing of the American comedian [John Belushi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Belushi).
> 
> Likewise, most of the "article" by Lor San Tekka is from [this NSFW Salon piece](http://www.salon.com/2004/04/22/kinski_2/) by Cintra Wilson on the German actor [Klaus Kinski](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Kinski).
> 
> The plot of "Awakening" is based on the _Delirium_ trilogy by Lauren Oliver.
> 
> In canon, [Teng Malar](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Teng_Malar) is a scavenger whom Rey knew on Jakku. The [_Carrion Spike_](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Carrion_Spike) is Tarkin's personal flagship. [Monument Plaza](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Monument_Plaza) is one of the places of interest on Coruscant. [Operation Strike Fear](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Operation_Strike_Fear) is the code name for a major offensive initiated by the Galactic Empire. [Elan](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Elan_Sleazebaggano) is that guy who tries to sell Obi-Wan deathsticks. And, lastly, fans of _Clone Wars_ and _Rebels_ all know and love [Ahsoka Tano](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ahsoka_Tano).
> 
> I'd also like to dedicate this fic as a belated wedding anniversary tribute to [Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall](http://www.harpersbazaar.com/celebrity/latest/news/g3706/humphrey-bogart-lauren-bacall/), because I am Old Hollywood trash, in case it wasn't obvious.


	2. Footprints on the Moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really should have mentioned this before, but our story is set a little ways off from the present year. Since Anakin was a seventies movie star in his twenties, I doubt he'd have a thirty-year-old grandson in 2016. One of the characters in this installment gives a vague timestamp to reflect that.
> 
> Projected chapter count has been extended to four, because this AU idea has taken a monstrous life of its own. Thank you for all the comments, kudos, and bookmarks so far! Keep 'em coming!

iv.

 

His first vivid memory was of his grandfather's eyes, silver blue like the ring around a lit candlewick, staring at some indeterminable point over the cameraman's shoulder like it was a future that only he could see. Anakin Skywalker's hair was a tangled copper blaze gleaming against the gray alley wall; a pistol hung slack from his shaking hand.

 

_"I am the great traitor,"_ he murmured, in a daze. _"There must be no other."_

 

Ben Organa-Solo was five years old, cross-legged on the floor with a bowl of popcorn in his lap, the television cranked up loud enough to be audible over the storm battering the windows of their Manhattan apartment. But it couldn't drown out his father's exasperated groan from the couch.

 

"Leia, this is a snoozefest," Han called to his wife, who was making mint juleps in the kitchen. "Can we put on _True Grit,_ instead?"

 

"Shh!" Ben hissed, leaning closer to the flickering screen.

 

_"If I want the birds to drop dead from the trees... then the birds will drop dead from the trees,"_ Anakin declared, stepping over the bullet-ridden mob boss sprawled at his feet.  _"I am the wrath of God. The earth I pass will see me and tremble. But whoever follows me and the river will win untold riches."_

 

Ben shuddered. He believed in every glorious, doomed shadow that crossed his twenty-five-year-old grandfather's face. This was a seventies movie, in the time before flashy special effects, when all you had was light tricks and the look in your eyes.

 

"Should the kid even be watching this?" Han muttered, more to himself because Leia was still an invisible presence clinking unseen glasses on an unseen countertop. "I don't know, seems like bad parenting..."

 

"Dad," Ben pleaded, "shut up." He wanted to remark that  _True Grit_ wasn't exactly wholesome family fare, either, but that would have meant more talking over the iconic monologue unfolding before him.

 

_"I am the wrath of God,"_ Anakin repeated, his gaze burning through the camera, through the decades. Burning into the soul.  _"Who else is with me?"_

 

"Me," Ben whispered, caught up in the moment, the magic.

 

Han burst out laughing. Ben jumped, popcorn spilling to the floor as he glanced behind him, startled, wounded. His father's laughter had always exploded like thunderclaps, unsettling the pieces of him that thrived in quiet and solitude.

 

"You're a trooper, kid." Han was shaking his head, a grin breaking across his rugged features. "You've got  _flair."_

 

Ben turned back to the television, his cheeks warm with equal parts anger and embarrassment. So much of childhood was like that afternoon— the apartment in shades of gray, old movies playing on tape, his father too loud and crass, his mother off-screen, somewhere.

 

*

 

Flashforward, and then—  _hold._

 

When he first saw her at the kickoff, it was like Louis and Lyla on the rooftop as the sweet trumpeted strains of "Moondance" floated up from the street below, or Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes peering at each other through water and glass. When he first heard her talk, he was fourteen years old again and in a near-constant state of spontaneous combustion over the way Evie Carnahan's rimmed spectacles slid down the bridge of her nose. But then he had to open his mouth and ruin it, because he wouldn't be him otherwise and, maybe, it was for the best. The last thing the show needed was Kylo Ren dragging his hapless co-star into some messy, short-lived affair that would leave both parties bitter and reeling, just like every relationship he'd ever had. Whenever he found himself smiling at Rey a little too warmly, or looking at her a little too long, all he had to do to put her back at arm's length was imagine Luke kicking him to the curb outside the Resistance complex and huffing,  _You'll never work in this town again!_ The time for selfishness was past. He'd walked that road, and it had led to a well-manicured Malibu lawn and orderlies in white and detox needles, and half-assed tennis games every Sunday.  _Awakening_ was Kylo's second chance; there would not be a third.

 

So. That was the exposition, the long title crawl. Right about now, the screenplay would be saying,  _PAN to Monument Plaza in June, after dark. Two figures sitting on a stone bench: the colossal fuck-up with the bleeding hand and the girl with the fifties-era film star eyes._ A light summer breeze rustled through the Catalina ironwoods, blowing loose strands of Rey's hair across her face, and Kylo hadn't done this in a while— the talking thing, the heartfelt words that weren't gauged to result in sex or glory. He didn't know how to do this while clean, or sober. He felt drained.

 

Sequins rippled beside him, cold and pure like a silver waterfall, as she lifted the hem of her skirt above her ankles, peering at her bare feet. He had marked her there when he removed her shoes, the blood from his fingers a thin dark ribbon smeared on her honeyed skin. An apology knotted in his throat and went no further, because he had never known how to say sorry, had never known how to repair all the things— all the lives— damaged by his touch. Redemption was only a kind of aftermath.

 

"You should head back," he told her, instead. "People must be wondering where you've gone."

 

She was quiet for a while, biting her bottom lip the way she did when she was nervous or uncertain about something. "They'll talk if you call it a night."

 

"Nothing I haven't heard before," he said, with a shrug. Headlines and soundbites scattered through his mind.  _Kylo blows his top! Raging Ren strikes again! Actor's father and state senator's husband in critical condition, story awaiting further developments—_

 

"No," Rey said, a little fiercely, and the expression on her face,  _fuck,_ she looked like Rose in the split-second before she clambered out of the lifeboat and back onto the sinking ship. "Come with me. Let's show them what you're made of."

 

And that was probably the wise thing to do, the brave thing, but he had never been very wise. Or brave, for that matter. "Don't want to," he sulked. "I'm done for tonight."

 

"You're done when I say you're done." She slid her feet into those torture-traps once more, and then she was standing over him, her arm outstretched. "Let's go."

 

He stared up at her, at this little lionheart in a silver gown, and he realized that he already knew what was going to happen, somewhere down the line. It was there in the sickening, hollow wrench of his gut, in the stone-cold certainty of someone who had lived off Hollywood tragedies ever since he was a boy. He was going to fall in love with her. They were going to destroy each other. The vultures would come circling in.

 

"Maybe I just don't want to go anywhere with you." He kept his voice soft, because that was sometimes more cruel. "I have no idea where you got the impression that we were friends, although chasing after me was a nice touch."  _You're a trooper, kid, you've got flair._ He mustered a smirk. "You're going to be a star."

 

Rey's hand dropped to her side. The urge to seize her wrist and draw it back to him— to press desperate kisses to her fingertips and beg,  _Stay with me—_ was so strong, so sharp, that Kylo nearly winced from the grief of it.  _Creation is violent,_ he reminded himself. He can use this pain in the future, can store it within his chest and take it out again for his villain's scenes, when he would have to play a man who had sacrificed everything for a higher cause.

 

She walked away, and he noticed that she was limping. Of course she would be, after traversing several blocks in those heels. Bile rose in his throat. "I'll call my car 'round," he offered, raising his voice so that she could hear it over the new distance between them.

 

"Honestly, don't bother," she snarled, without sparing him a single glance. "Don't do me any favors, because, I swear to God, this is the last thing that  _I_ am ever going to do for  _you."_

 

He fell silent, letting her have the final word as she disappeared into the night. He could do that much for her, at least.

 

*

 

_Exciting things are happening on_ Awakening,  _the Resistance Studios weekly production that has caught America by storm! Last night's flashback episode revealed that Adam, our favorite masked antagonist portrayed by none other than Kylo Ren, has, in fact,_ not  _undergone the surgical procedure that turns people in this dystopian society into loveless shells of their former selves. He's been in deep cover ever since he was eighteen, working to dismantle the authoritarian government that took his father away. This new, shocking twist explains so much about Adam's actions prior to this amazing season finale, rated 9 stars out of 10 on Imperial Database. He has always been more emotional than the other members of Supreme Leader Plagueis' secret police. At times, one could almost say he was tender in his treatment of Daisy, the vivacious heroine played to stunning perfection by Hollywood newcomer, Rey. Does this mean that Adam will join forces with the Rebellion in the future? We can't wait to find out!_

 

_In the meantime, we'll be content just reveling in Kylo's heartbreaking, nuanced performance last night. It was this episode, more so than any other— and more so than his previous films— that really showed Kylo's acting chops. We feel confident enough to assert that, given a little more time, he might follow in the footsteps of his grandfather, the great Anakin Skywalker himself..._

 

v.

 

He spent most of season hiatus in his apartment, watching  _Blackadder_ and getting his food delivered from Yuza Bre. Occasionally he'd click around JustJarJar.com, for kicks, but he stopped doing that the day they released photos of his castmates on their Spira vacation. There was something about Rey's grin in those stolen shots that made him resent the paparazzi more than ever— her lazy, sun-warmed contentment as she frolicked on the beaches with Finn, Jessika, and Poe seemed like one of those precious things that the world had no right to gawk at, to cheapen with speculations about whom she was sleeping with and whether or not she had gained weight. But he was also, maybe, guilty of staring at her pictures too long, until the sand-polished curves of her bikini-clad body surfaced from the ocean every time he closed his eyes, interspersed with Rowan Atkinson's deadpan mug throughout the ages— the Crusades, the Elizabethan and Regency eras, the trenches of the Great War.

 

Yeah, it was pretty fucked up.

 

Three days before filming resumed, his uncle dragged him to The Carrion Spike for "a round with an old acquaintance." Ahsoka had aged gracefully, still small and svelte, with a pair of bright blue eyes watching the world, hawk-like, from a bronze, angular face that bore wrinkles as triumphantly as battle scars. She was smoking at a corner table when Kylo and Luke entered the bar; she nodded at them through a silver cloud.

 

"How long are you in town for?" Luke asked her.

 

"A week." Her voice was throaty now, scratched over with bourbon and nicotine, a far cry from the glass bell that had chimed in many a theatre and through the surround sound of the Organa-Solo setup in that Manhattan apartment. "Just wanted to catch a little sun. Of course, I could've done that anywhere else in California. Hell, I could've gone to Miami and avoided this state altogether. Maybe I was feeling nostalgic. A lot has changed. This place is still here, though." She glanced around, her lip curling at whatever she saw in the mahogany panels, the faded Oriental throw rugs. " _We_ were New Hollywood, once. Age of excess. We were all flush, coked up to the gills, although not as much as the press would have you believe— the studios couldn't have churned out  _Five Easy Pieces_ or  _The Godfather_ or  _Apocalypse Now_ if everyone was doing orgies all the time, you know? But the decadence was there." She pointed, with the hand that wasn't holding her cigarette. "That bitch, Asajj, she shaved her head  _there,_ sitting on the countertop. It wasn't like that poor kid, that Britney girl, who just wanted the world to own one less piece of her. Asajj was flying, feeling invincible, and someone dared her to."

 

Eventually, Luke excused himself to take a call, leaving Kylo alone with Ahsoka. He glumly nursed his iced tea while she sipped at her bourbon, until, finally, he blurted out, "Why did you quit the business? After  _Rebels?"_ The Academy had nominated her for that role, and it was the consensus that, if she hadn't retired early, she would have gone on to become as much of a household name as Fonda or Sarandon.

 

Ahsoka set her glass down on the table and took another puff from her cigarette, before stubbing it out on the crystal ashtray. "I didn't like what I was turning into," she said, bluntly. "It wasn't the easiest decision. Everyone thought I was crazy. There was nobody around to tell me that it was okay to leave."

 

"Didn't you miss it?"

 

"The acting, sure. The energy on set, between me and the camera and the director and my co-stars, yeah, I missed that. Still do, sometimes. I can't say the same for all the bullshit that came along with it." She lit another cigarette. Everyone smoked, back in the seventies; Kylo wondered if the government had required warning labels on the packs yet, or if that had come much later. "Listen,  _Ben._ I'm going to do for you what nobody ever did for me. I'm going to tell you that it's okay to leave."

 

Kylo scowled. "What makes you think I want to—"

 

"You look like your grandfather," Ahsoka interrupted. "You look the way your grandfather did when Palpatine started courting him to play the lead in  _Dark Lord._ I swear, the way you're all broody now, it could be more than half a century ago and I could be sitting here with Anakin, having one last drink." She sloshed her bourbon around in its glass, as if making a point. "He was already slipping. Obi-Wan and I begged him not to do it."

 

" _Dark Lord,"_ Kylo retorted, stiffly, "is one of the finest films ever made. Vader is a classic character who has endured the test of time."

 

"It was Anakin's best performance, no doubt," Ahsoka muttered to the contents of her glass, "but it was also the one that— well, you remember  _that_ scene?"

 

Kylo nodded. There was only one scene that people meant when they talked about  _"that scene from_ Dark Lord"— Vader killing his wife, strangling her with his bare hands, his face twisted and unrecognizable.

 

"That was the moment," Ahsoka continued, her eyes now wide with some remembered horror. "There is— this is hard to explain, but— you know how there's an emotional bend you can't go around? Not if you want to remain reasonably sane? Actors flirt with that bend more than anyone else on the planet. What Anakin did to pull off that scene, to make it so chilling and so real, was an act of surrender. He sacrificed himself to the text, he went to that place of absolute, irredeemable wretchedness, and he was never able to fully retrieve himself afterwards. The next time you watch that movie, pay close attention to when he looks up at the camera after killing his wife, because that's not just Vader anymore. That's Anakin, bleeding over into a role that he shouldn't have accepted in the first place. That scene is when you watch him let go of the rope— the high end of which is happiness. He never should have done _Dark Lord._ He never recovered from it— how could he? No one told him that it was okay to leave, either. Not me, not even Obi-Wan. We should have. Instead, we assured him that there would be other roles, less destructive roles. Anything but that."

 

"But it immortalized him," Kylo protested, even though the words sounded small in his mouth. "Because of it, he will live forever.  _Wrath of God_ was excellent, but it wasn't enough to make him a legend. Only  _Dark Lord_ could have done that."

 

Ahsoka seemed exasperated, but not all that surprised. "Kid," she said, bleakly, "you're getting far too old to continue missing the point. The people who were with your grandfather in that hotel room when he died, I heard they were some local politician and one of the Eagles. You really want those to be the last faces  _you_ ever see?" She raised her glass to him. "Think about it."

 

*

 

Rey came back with a golden tan and more freckles, her hair turned a shade lighter by the sun-drenched shores of Spira. Kylo was present for her makeup artist's tirade, sitting in an uncomfortable chair and glancing at her reflection in the mirror while his own makeup artist painted bruises under his eyes.

 

"You look like you just spent two weeks on a beach, instead of hiding from the government in an underground city for months!"

 

"I  _did_ just come back from the beach," Rey pouted. The man threw his arms up in disgust and continued ranting, and she rolled her eyes and caught Kylo's gaze in the mirror.

 

Before he could succumb to the urge to toss her a conspiratorial grimace— to move their relationship back into a semblance of what it was before that night in the park on Monument Plaza— she hurriedly looked away. He flinched, and it was  _his_ makeup artist's turn to curse.

 

Two hours later, with Rey's hair dyed a darker brown and her freckles covered up by layers of foundation, Kylo watched as she and Finn got into position on set. It had been made to look like a dingy gray workshop in the Rebellion's subterranean fortress, and Rey and Finn were valiantly trying to keep straight faces as they sprawled against each other on the floor like a couple consumed by desire.

 

"I think you took enough mints." Rey snatched Finn's box of Tic Tacs and tossed it to BB on the sidelines. "Seriously, I can smell them from here."

 

_"I_ can smell them from here," BB quipped.

 

And then the cameras were rolling, and  _Daisy_ and  _John_ were locking lips, and Kylo could not do this, could not watch Rey kiss someone else, even if it was all pretend. He averted his gaze, but he couldn't clap his palms over his ears to muffle her delicate little gasps, no matter how much he wanted to. Would she sound like that if it were real, if she were with him—

 

He sternly halted this train of thought, balling his hands into fists and looking at Poe, instead. The other man was observing the scene with a neutral expression, and, _God,_ how embarrassing was it that a former _teen star_ could be more professional than he was? Although maybe Poe was anticipating the moment when his character, Oscar, would bounce onto set like the world's biggest cockblock. Every great romance was incomplete without at least one _coitus interruptus_ scene; it was practically a trope by now.

 

The torture lasted forever because Luke was a fucking perfectionist when it came to shit like angles and blocking. After the tenth take, Kylo was ridden with bulletholes; he simply did not have it in him to process another second of Finn's arms around Rey, or Finn and Rey scrunching their noses against each other's every time Luke called  _Cut,_ so adorable that Kylo wanted to vomit. There was only so much that a man could endure.

 

He had enough presence of mind, at least, to storm out before they resumed filming the scene. As he left, he swore he heard Jessika whisper to Poe,  _"Gone with the Whine."_

 

*

 

When they were done for the day, his castmates huddled in a corner and muttered furiously among themselves as the crew packed up. Kylo caught snatches of  _"You ask him!"— "No, you!"—_ while he texted his mother the usual excuses why he couldn't visit anytime soon.

 

It was Finn who drew the shorter end of the metaphorical stick, marching over to where Kylo stood as Jessika, Poe, and Rey made encouraging motions behind his back. For actors, they weren't very subtle. Kylo imagined the  _Jaws_ theme song playing right before Finn opened his mouth.

 

"Hey, man, so, um— we're having pizza at mine and Rey's place, maybe watch a DVD. You in?"

 

"My uncle put you up to this," Kylo said, flatly.

 

Finn managed an Emmy-winning double-take. "What? No, of course not!" But then he shot a furtive glance at Luke, who was deep in conversation with one of the writers at the other end of the room. "Although, well, we've all been talking, and it might be a good idea for you to hang out with us more often. Have the paps get in some shots of you with us, yeah? To sort of tone down the rumors about how we, er, hate you."

 

_Don't you?_ Kylo almost asked, but he had a better argument all loaded up. "I believe any off-screen friendship would be detrimental, considering that we are supposed to be on opposite sides of a war."

 

"Our methods may differ, but we have the same end goal in mind," Finn automatically pointed out, before he rolled his eyes at himself. "Jesus, now I'm talking like you. Our  _characters'_ methods may differ, is what I mean."

 

" _Method_ is, of course, the key word here."

 

"Yeah?" Now Finn drew himself up to his fullest height, which wasn't much compared to Kylo's, but there was something to be said about determination like that, how it could scale buildings. "Look, there's a difference between method acting and being an asshole. Take Daniel Day-Lewis in  _My Left Foot,_ all right? When he broke his ribs because he refused to leave his wheelchair throughout the length of the shoot,  _that_ was commitment. But, when he insisted on being spoon-fed off-set so that he wouldn't break character,  _that_ was just wasting some poor assistant's time. So—" And here he eyed Kylo with an air of challenge— "what's it gonna be?"

 

*

 

Unsurprisingly, Finn and Rey's loft apartment on Ileenium Boulevard was a paean to hipsterdom. Charmingly cluttered, with tall linen-draped windows to let in the light, the living room boasted rustic pinewood accents, Art Deco rugs, and mismatched beanbag chairs in bright colors. There was a graphic wall lined from floor to ceiling with Polaroids and glam rock posters, and a sign above the ornamental fireplace that read  _IT'D BE A LOT COOLER IF YOU DID_ in oversized font. There was even a repurposed picket fence on the walk-in kitchen wall, to hang all the spatulas and pans.

 

And, everywhere, there were flowers— geraniums and African violets and sunflowers and Cape primroses in little white pots, growing alongside yarn cupcakes and stacks of magazines. Kylo felt too big for this place, too jaded, too tired; he hung back awkwardly with his hands shoved into the pockets of his gray sweater as his castmates bickered over what pizza toppings to get, and then what movie to watch. Rey was doing a pretty good job ignoring him, which came as a relief because he wasn't ready to deal with how much he had missed her during the break. She chattered animatedly, her fluttering hands and slender form suspended in end-of-day light, and, yeah, okay, he could like the color yellow when it was like this, soft and forgiving, even though it gathered like loneliness in the space below his heart.

 

By the time the pizza arrived (vegan cheese and arugula, because,  _of course),_ they had agreed on  _The Graduate._ Finn and Poe snuggled on the green beanbag chair while Jessika took the purple one, and Rey the orange. Kylo did not feel that his dignity could survive a beanbag chair, so he sat on the floor and took great care not to let his shoulder brush against Rey's knee.

 

"God, this is one of the best closing shots," Poe reverently sighed when the pizza had disappeared and the camera was lingering on Elaine and Benjamin in the bus after he whisked her away from her wedding to someone else, their elated smiles slowly morphing into uncertainty. "It's like— they were immortal and reckless for a while there, but now that they've gotten the big romantic gesture out of the way, they have no idea what's going to happen next, how they're going to handle the fallout of their actions. The audience is forced to ask what comes  _after_ the happy ending. Brilliant."

 

"Actually, that scene was a happy accident," Kylo spoke up. "Nichols asked the film's editor to stand in for him as director for that last part, and the guy forgot to yell  _'Cut.'_ Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross didn't want to break character, so they just continued sitting there. That ending is the actors wondering why they haven't wrapped yet, why they're still on that bus—"

 

He was interrupted by a chorus of groans from his castmates. Jessika flicked arugula at his hair.

 

*

 

"Wait," Rey said, just as he was about to leave. They were alone in the den; Jessika had taken off, and Finn and Poe had disappeared into the former's bedroom.

 

Kylo waited. Rey ducked into her own bedroom and emerged five minutes later with a recyclable brown bag, which she held out to him. "It's just a little thing I picked up in Spira," she muttered, almost defensively. "One of those corny handmade picture frames, with seashells and stuff. I didn't know what you'd like, but I had to get you  _something._ And it's made from salvaged parts of boats that were destroyed during the last hurricane, and the proceeds go to the affected fishermen, so."

 

"So," Kylo repeated, his mouth dry.

 

"Look, don't give me a hard time about this, okay? You didn't come with us, so I got you a souvenir. Don't be a dick about it. Please."

 

Her hazel eyes were wary and her tone was agitated and her lips were chapped from kissing Finn, and, in all honesty, Kylo wanted to cry. He'd met her too late; she deserved better than what he had become.  _Maybe in another life,_ he thought, as he took the bag from her with a mumbled "Thank you" and nothing else.

 

vi.

 

They were shooting on location in Takodana Forest, several miles north of Coruscant, when the tabloids broke the story of Rey's past. It hadn't exactly been a secret, but neither had she gone into much detail during her interviews, so someone went to Omaha and sniffed around.  _Rags to riches!_ screamed the lurid headlines.  _A British orphan's journey to American stardom!_

 

On every corner of the Internet, there was a picture of Rey at seventeen, posing with her mother at a neighbor's Fourth of July cookout. She was skinny and sallow, her hair in the three-bun style that she favored even until now. The older woman in the photo had an arm draped over Rey's shoulders, and shared her smile and the tilt of her nose. You could see the blossoming hope, and all the tentative happiness that could only come after years of hardship, and no decent human being would have sought to capitalize on that. It was vile. It was unfair.

 

Kylo found himself knocking on Rey's trailer at ten in the morning. "Go away!" he heard her shout from inside, but he was so—

 

— frustrated and angry and helpless, and the flimsy lock succumbed to one particularly hard _push._

 

She hurled a throw pillow at him; it bounced off his chest, and he stepped over it on his way to where she sat. Crumpled wads of tissue littered the tabletop, and he'd give anything for Finn or Jessika or Poe to be here because  _they_ would know what to say, how to comfort her. But it was only the two of them, for the forest scene. Here and now, she only had him, the poorest of substitutes.

 

He knelt in front of her. She glared at him in disbelief, her eyes rimmed red. "You broke down my door."

 

"No shit." He nearly bit through his tongue the moment it lashed out like that— stupid,  _stupid—_ but he was soon distracted when she tried to kick him. He grabbed her leg, bared by denim cutoffs, and hooked her knee over his arm to keep her still. His pulse leapt into his throat as his palm met the smooth skin of her thigh and stayed there. It was uncomfortable, kneeling on the floor and gazing up at her like this, but he wouldn't have moved for anything, not when she looked so alone and defiant in spite of that.

 

Before long, Rey began to speak. Grudgingly, at first, and then raw and rambling, like a dam had given way at last. "She was an orphan, too. Brought up in England by a maiden aunt, who died unexpectedly. She had me when she was eighteen and scared out of her wits. Left me on the front steps of the orphanage— that's really cliche, isn't it— and ran off to America. Her grandfather here had already processed her papers, it would have been too much of a hassle to start the whole thing over again with a kid, she was out of time and out of funds, and he didn't even know she had gotten knocked up by some boy she met at a show. But  _she came back for me._ I never stopped believing that she would. And it was great. Better than I expected, even though I'd gone so long without a mother that I didn't know how to treat her like one, and—" Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. "And she was  _mine._ I only had four years with her, but— the life I had in Jakku, and the life she gave me in Omaha, all of that was supposed to be just mine and no one else's, and now I've got people begging me for exclusive interviews because they want to pick it all apart—"

 

"Phasma can take care of that," Kylo said. "She can double as your PA and mine, until you're able to hire someone—"

 

It had seemed like a good idea to him, one less problem to deal with, but he quickly backtracked once Rey's features crumpled and she started sobbing. "Or, whatever, you should do whatever you want, it was only a suggestion—"

 

She buried her face in her hands and shook her head violently. "No, no, that's— okay, let's do that, thank you, I just..."

 

His fingers traced patterns on her thigh, an idle gesture that was more worried than it was anything else. "Just what?"

 

"I'm not used to you being nice to me," she finally admitted, in a small voice, her shoulders hunched into herself as if she was waiting for the universe to strike another blow.

 

Self-loathing hollowed out Kylo's stomach. He thought of her hand offered to him beneath the moonlight, how she'd limped out of the park afterwards, how he should have begged her to stay. "I'm sorry," he rasped, the words strained, so long unused. Right about now, the screenplay would be saying,  _PAN DOWN and HOLD on the wreckage left by the villain's own hubris, FLASHBACK to a September night three years ago, the villain sagging against a waiting room wall and weeping in relief when the doctor comes out to tell him that he hasn't killed his father. MONTAGE of the wasted years, of all the choices that led you to this place, unworthy even to kneel at the heroine's feet._ "I'm sorry," he said again, and he bent his head, pressing his face against the side of Rey's leg before turning to kiss her knee as gently as he could, as gently as someone like him could manage. "I'm sorry," he murmured into her skin, closing his eyes. "I'm sorry."

 

*

 

The forest scene was Adam and Daisy's first encounter in the new season. It was meant to be a vicious, searing confrontation, with him trying to capture her again as she raced to the underground city to warn the Rebellion of an impending attack. Kylo kept to the script, as did Rey, but there was an undercurrent of— something else. He could sense it in the way they spoke to each other, and even in the way they exchanged glares. Everything was too tender, too poignant, as if what had transpired in her trailer was spilling over onto the set. As if they had brought it with them.

 

This wasn't how the scene was supposed to go, but the cameras kept rolling and so Kylo just went with it, gave himself up to his co-star's rhythm. And it was...  _amazing._ The distant part of him that was always watching from the outside and automatically filtering corrections and adjustments to his movements, his facial expressions, and his inflections— that part just stood there, stunned, as he and Rey played off each other perfectly, better than they ever had before. It didn't matter at all that he was sweating buckets in his costume, or that a gnat nearly flew right up his nose when he took his mask off. There was only Rey— no,  _Daisy—_ and the forest, and the cause.

 

They managed to film the whole thing in one take. More than a few mouths were hanging open among the crew. Luke himself was blinking and beaming, and, after they had the all-clear to break character, Rey shook her head and then stared up at Kylo like she had just emerged from a trance.

 

"That was..." She trailed off, at a loss for words.

 

"It," Kylo couldn't stop himself from supplying, still riding the high. "That was it. Jesus, Rey. Nothing will ever be that good again. Nothing will ever come  _close."_

 

She giggled. It was a quarter past noon, and the relentless golden sunlight was bringing out all the green in her eyes. The way she smiled at him just then reminded him of the other Hepburn— the one Spencer Tracy had loved— raising an innocent, blissful face to the heavens in  _The African Queen._ It was a radiant, happy smile, brighter than the sunflowers in her apartment on Ileenium Boulevard, full of the same hopeful cheer that had shone through from a seventeen-year-old girl tucked into her mother's side beneath a Nebraska sky.

 

_Can you really stay like this? Can anyone?_ he wondered.  _I don't want Hollywood to swallow you whole._

 

He offered her a ride home. The sun was setting over the emerald hills by the time his TIE sped into Coruscant, and she was aimlessly flicking through radio stations, lingering on one that had a DJ humoring an anonymous caller who claimed that  _"I'm telling you, man, it was Bette Midler and Linda Ronstadt who were with him when he died—"_

 

Kylo felt rather than saw Rey's gaze slide in his direction. He shrugged. "My favorite theory is that the CIA killed him."

 

"Whatever your grandfather was," she scoffed, "he was  _not_ Marilyn Monroe." 

 

And then she very firmly changed the station to a jaunty Tegan and Sara song, humming the words under her breath,  _and it drove me, and it drove me wild._ The skies darkened and the streetlamps lit up one by one, and she seemed so dear to him in that moment. So infinitely dear.

 

*

 

_Sparks flew on last night's episode of_ Awakening!  _Adam and Daisy meet again, and she goads him into taking off his mask. The "oh no, he's hot" look on her face when he does— we feel you, Daisy! The resulting confrontation is satisfyingly epic, but there is an unholiness that pervades the scene. The energy between our villain and our heroine is strange and unsettling, like a theremin sonata only they can hear..._

 

_Is this intentional on the writers' part? Is Luke Skywalker setting the stage for yet another twist— one that goes straight to the heart? Or is it merely a byproduct of the explosive chemistry between Rey and Kylo Ren? The suspense is killing us! Next week cannot come soon enough!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anakin's "Wrath of God" monologue is from [_Aguirre, the Wrath of God_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aguirre,_the_Wrath_of_God), directed by Werner Herzog and starring Klaus Kinski.
> 
> "Louis and Lyla" are from [_August Rush_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Rush), while that DiCaprio/Danes scene is from [_Romeo + Juliet_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romeo_%2B_Juliet).
> 
> The [_Blackadder ___](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackadder)reference is a shout-out to the lovely R.J. Anderson!
> 
> [Yuza Bre](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Yuza_Bre).
> 
> [Spira](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Spira).
> 
> [Asajj Ventress](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Asajj_Ventress).
> 
> Ahsoka's thoughts on the "Vader" role is based on the Kinski thinkpiece that I linked to in Chapter 1.
> 
> "It'd be a lot cooler if you did" is a quote from [_Dazed and Confused_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazed_and_Confused_%28film%29).
> 
> And of course I had to reference the infamous [theremin sonata](http://time.com/4150168/review-star-wars-the-force-awakens/) article ;)


	3. Wrath of God

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ayyy, penultimate chapter! But there is a distinct possibility that the last one might get too long and I'll have to split it. We'll see. Also, my lovely prompt-giver, Ellie, wanted smut... so... I'm not promising anything yet, but there _might_ be a rating change come Act IV.
> 
> I would truly appreciate feedback on this update before I move on to the last phase of the story. If there's anything you would like to suggest, or any aspect that you want me to expound on, or any area that you feel needs to be improved upon, now would be the perfect time to let me know, before I wrap it all up. (But, of course, even just a simple one-line comment would be great motivation, as I really need this fic finished by next week so I can start working on my piece for the [Reylo Anthology](http://reylofanfictionanthology.tumblr.com/)).
> 
> Thank you for being the best readers a girl could ask for! Hope you like this installment!

vii.

 

"I hate events," Rey said through clenched teeth bared in a smile, her hand perched on one silk-clad hip that was tossed out in what her stylist had declared was the best, most flattering angle.

 

Poe threw back his head in a charming laugh that disguised his yawn. "What's this for again?" He had an arm around her waist, which he was clutching more tightly than usual in order to anchor his sleep-deprived self to the real world.

 

Rey blinked. Flashbulbs burst behind her shut lids— great, now there'd be pictures of her with her eyes closed. "Shit, I forgot. It's either the launch of Neimoidia's spring collection or Teneniel Djo's fifty-seventh birthday."

 

"Pretty sure the Dame's birthday isn't until this weekend— here comes Finn, let's ask him—"

 

Finn waved at the throng of photographers as he took his place beside Rey. "I love events!" he gushed.

 

"Is this the Neimoidia fashion show or Teneniel's bash?" Rey hissed, while Poe leaned in eagerly to catch the answer.

 

"Huh? Neither," said Finn. "It's the Chandrilan Blue '439 launch."

 

Rey's fixed smile relaxed into something more genuine. "Alcohol!"

 

"Alcohol!" Jessika agreed, materializing at Finn's elbow and sending the photographers into another frenzy.

 

"I've summoned Jess," Rey said, chuckling.

 

"Kylo's right behind me," the other woman informed her. "He nearly rear-ended me, actually. That man is not a good driver."

 

"I'm surprised he showed at all." Rey spoke to conceal the way her heartbeat sped up. She'd gotten paranoid lately; she was afraid that the whole world might hear it, too. "Considering that he doesn't drink."

 

"Maybe he's hoping to bump into someone," Finn suggested. "I heard that his ex was going to be here."

 

And, _this?_ Was the part where Rey earned her Oscar in the goddamned academy of life. "Oh?" Her tone was casual. Breezy. "Which ex is this?"

 

"Tahiri," said Finn. "The rockstar."

 

Last month's _Rolling Stone_ cover surfaced in Rey's mind— pale skin, long hair so blonde it was almost white, dark lipstick, smoky green eyes. Tahiri Veila had been Kylo's last publicized fling before he went into rehab, and Rey had _no right_ to this sour, niggling unease that gnawed at her like a toothace, but. Still.

 

Kylo appeared in his usual formal getup— black suit and tie, clean-shaven, messy-haired. "You look gorgeous," he said to Rey, mostly for the press' benefit, but the vague, lopsided half-smile on his face made her think that he meant it, maybe.

 

"I look like Barney the Dinosaur's wedding cake," she corrected, indicating the violet ruffles that spilled from her neckline to her ankles.

 

"Good enough to eat, yeah," he drawled, with a gleam in his brown eyes and his mouth widening in that lazy, obnoxious grin that she knew so well.

 

She smacked his arm lightly, praying that he didn't notice the slow flush beneath her foundation or the way her hand lingered on the taut muscle encased in his sleeve. They obligingly posed with their castmates and bantered with the photographers— although Kylo was more distant than the rest of them, and, when they'd first started doing press, Rey had thought he was under orders from his publicist to play up the whole sullen bad-boy image, but working with him for almost two years had made her realize that broodiness was his natural state.

 

He offered her his arm before they made their way to the main hall. The walk was all camera flashes, reporters begging for their attention, her fingers latched into the crook of his elbow, him warm and solid next to her. Finn, Jessika, and Poe were parading up ahead, silhouetted against the sea of blinding, splintering light and the glowing neon panels of the hall in the distance, from which some breathy EDM song was playing, drawing them in. These were the moments, this rush, this adoration, that had people flocking to Hollywood wanting to get a piece, and here was Rey at the center of it all. It was enough to turn anyone's head.

 

"Kylo!" A man thrust his voice recorder over the guardrail. "What are you going to say to Tahiri when you see her?"

 

Kylo had already turned to Rey before the journalist had even finished his question. "What's your favorite movie?"

 

"Officially?  _Pulp Fiction."_

 

"I should have known you would be a Tarantino girl." His brow creased when he caught the qualifier. "And  _un_ officially?"

 

She bit her lip.  _"Clueless."_

 

Later, it was reported by several gossip websites that the glum and fearsome Kylo Ren had actually been  _laughing_ on the red carpet. Several commenters opined that he was doing drugs again, while the rest merely gushed that he and Rey looked cute together. 

 

*

 

And, okay, so Chandrilan Blue's new '439 whiskey was  _good._ Smooth and mellow, like an autumn evening by the fireplace. Rey was on her third Old Fashioned— prepared to citrus-twist perfection by one of the armada of bartenders— when she found herself face-to-face with Tahiri, who was,  _of course,_ drinking her '439 neat and wearing a snug black dress and artfully-ripped fishnets that made Rey feel like a downright  _prep._

 

"I, uh, love your music," Rey blurted out because, well, she  _did._ "Especially  _Promises."_

 

Tahiri quirked a sculpted eyebrow. "Most people would say  _Tempest._ Or  _The Swarm War."_ Her voice, when she wasn't screaming into a microphone, contained a floaty Southern belle lilt that would have made Scarlett O'Hara eat her heart out.

 

" _Promises_ was... very raw. Very honest." God, Rey could kick herself, falling into the usual industry cliches without even realizing— "I could relate to it."

 

"Maybe you really could have." Tahiri's sea-green eyes were calculating beneath all that black liner. "It was the album I wrote after Kylo and I broke up."

 

Rey frowned. "Are we seriously doing the catty thing? Because, I'll have you know, I've watched enough nineties teen movies to hold my own."

 

Tahiri burst out laughing. It was as if a mask had been removed; she seemed heartbreakingly young for a moment, a bit more like that nineteen-year-old in the ponytail and the jeans, singing to an uncaring Virginia bar in a decade-old video Rey had once seen on YouTube. "I don't watch your show— bad memories, you understand— but my band is  _addicted_ to it."

 

"Thank you for telling me," Rey said, with a genuine smile. "And, for the record, Kylo and I aren't together."

 

Tahiri blinked. "Oh, I'm sorry. I thought— given the way he—" She stared into the distance for a while, as if considering her options, and then shrugged off the rest of her sentence, raising her glass into the space between them. "Anyway, cheers?"

 

"Sure. Cheers," Rey echoed, a little bewildered as she clinked her glass against Tahiri's.  _Given the way he— what?_ "I've seen you before, actually. Two years ago? You checked in at the Death Star. I used to work there."

 

Tahiri pouted. "I asked for the room Anakin Skywalker died in, but it's apparently some big secret." She leaned in closer. "You know that, like, Sean Connery and Tupac were with him when he bit the dust?"

 

Rey made the appropriate noises. That was the best one she'd heard yet.

 

*

 

People got drunker as the night went on. The lights had dimmed and the music had slowed to that sinuous kind of R&B that made you think of your lovers, of fingers and lips and heartbeats and half-lidded eyes. And yet there were  _still_ reporters milling about, hoping for one last juicy tidbit before they slunk home to their rent-split-four-ways apartments or their charged-to-the-company motel rooms. Of course, the  _dedicated_ ones would be hitting up the clubs along West Hollywood, trawling for scandal.

 

Sometimes, when Rey was feeling charitable, she'd muse on how theirs was, overall, a thankless job. How many of them had been high school kids once, dreaming of the Pulitzer?

 

But she was definitely  _not_ feeling charitable when one of them planted himself in front of her once she left the bathroom. He barked a question about her mom, which she ignored by attaching herself to the next familiar form to drift past.

 

_"There_ you are," she cooed at Kylo, her head spinning from the alcohol and his nearness. "You promised me a dance."

 

Looking bemused, he let her drag him into the throng of gyrating bodies, as far away from the reporter as possible. Once she gauged that they were safely hidden from view, she dropped his arm and then they just sort of... stared at each other. She was distantly aware of the people around them singing along to Snakehips in soft, slurred voices,  _all my friends are wasted, and I hate this love, and I drink too much,_ and of the moving bodies pushing her closer to him, inch by inch.

 

"I thought you wanted to dance," Kylo said. His hands were in his pockets and his head was cocked at her as if in challenge, blue light tangled in the waves of his dark hair.

 

"I just said that to get the reporter off my tail," Rey snorted.  _"Obviously."_

 

"Obviously," he echoed, sounding strangely wistful.

 

And then his fingers were pressing into her hips, and he was hauling her against him, and he smelled like sandalwood and vanilla and lemon soap and spicy aftershave, and—

 

"What are you  _doing?"_ she squeaked into his shirtfront.

 

"Saving you from rumors about how the star of  _Awakening_ is a snob to the press," he murmured in her ear. "The reporter followed us."

 

"You could've just warned me."

 

"Sorry. Ad libbing is a compulsion by now." He caught the eye of a nearby bouncer and nodded, and the reporter was promptly led away before any incriminating photos could be snapped.

 

"I don't like your manners," she sniffed, in her best Vivian Rutledge.

 

"And I'm not crazy about yours," he retorted, in a pretty competent Philip Marlowe.

 

She hid a reluctant smile against his chest. "So we're Bogie and Bacall now?"

 

"Hmm. If you like." His lips grazed her temple, as soft and cool as raindrops. Unlike the other couples on the dance floor, they weren't swaying to the beat— they were hardly even moving. But Rey could trace the rhythm of Kylo's heart beneath her cheek, could feel the quiet, uncertain tide of his breath in her hair. He had one hand curled at her waist while the other spanned the small of her back, and the song was so dark and wild in the air around them,  _my eyes are black and red, I'm crawling back to your bed._ It felt like every single teen movie rolled into one, parties and parking lot nights and youth and longing. And maybe, just maybe, she could blame the alcohol tomorrow, like all the good girls did.

 

"What's  _your_ favorite movie?" she asked him.

 

"Officially or unofficially?" he shot back, and, while she wasn't looking up at his face, she could hear the teasing grin in his voice, warm like all the whiskey that had slid down her throat this evening.

 

She thought about it, and then said, "The one that's real."

 

And she expected him to name one of his grandfather's films— or perhaps  _Raging Bull_ or  _The Departed,_ he seemed like a Scorsese kind of guy— so she was unprepared for what his mouth traced in the air next to her temple, and how his chest rumbled beneath her cheek.  _"Hiroshima mon amour."_

 

"Never heard of it."

 

"I'll show you," he blurted out. "Someday."

 

The alcohol was such a sluggish, fiery haze in her head, but  _someday_ sounded nice.  _Someday_ sounded like a future, one that went beyond the walls of this room. She looped her arms around his neck and ran her fingers through his hair, which was as soft to the touch as she had imagined it would be. He leaned in closer, just a little bit, sighing into the curve of her cheekbone, his fingers drifting down to the base of her spine. And, oh, this was so dangerous, all this heat in all this darkness, all these things that she did not have names for.

 

" _You're_ not drunk, are you?" she asked him, suspiciously.

 

"I wish."

 

"Do you miss it?" she pressed, because she'd always wondered. "The, you know, the partying?"

 

He was silent for a while, rocking her ever so slightly in his arms. "There are many things that I want to tell you," he said, at last, "but I hardly think this is the right place."

 

She swallowed, and clung tighter to his shirtfront. "So, let's go."

 

*

 

As his sleek black car nosed down the streets, she kept her warm forehead pressed to the coolness of the passenger seat window, her breath fogging up the glass. She was drunk enough that it all seemed vaguely unreal— the neon signs and the roving partygoers that went rushing past, the length of concrete that rolled on and on, the music piped through the speakers— a song she didn't know, with the poignant gray-afternoon alt-rock tinge that had characterized the early years of this millennium.  _And I miss San Francisco, the smell of the ocean, the way the fog hits your headlights..._

 

At every stoplight, Kylo would hit the brakes and glance at her as if he, too, couldn't believe that she was in his car and they were going somewhere, just the two of them. She'd peer at him through her lashes, the distance between them bridged by cold air and soaring guitars, and it would be so easy, in her inebriated state, to just lean over and—

 

Rey stifled this train of thought before it could leave her common sense at the station. It hadn't been that long ago when she hated his guts. Or thought she did, anyway, before that morning in her trailer, with him knelt at her feet and murmuring awkward words of comfort into her knee as she sobbed her heart out.

 

They drove for what seemed like hours, until his TIE skidded to a stop on a grassy ridge overlooking the city. She perched on the hood, kicking off her heels and leaning back on her bare elbows, her voluminous skirts spread over the metal. Stars filled her eyes, arctic silver burning late into the black velvet night, and Kylo slouched against the bumper with his hands in his pockets and a faint breeze pushing his hair across his sullen, chiseled face.

 

"Do you remember that scene from  _Almost Famous—"_ he began, and she jolted a little at that, and was suddenly overcome by the urge to laugh. Later, she would be glad that she didn't, glad that she let him continue, instead— "with Russell on the roof, yelling,  _'I am a golden god'?_ It's a terrible cliche, but, yeah, it was like that for me, at first. I was young, my name in lights, and I could take anything I wanted. All I had to do was  _want_ it. On the whole, it was not the most elegant of destructions, but it was... easy. It was glorious. It was  _mine."_ He shrugged. "I can't explain it any better than that. I'm still not sure if I was ever  _truly_ addicted to any of it— the booze, the chemicals— or if it had merely become a habit, because there was nothing else to do. Although, I guess that's just as bad as getting hooked."

 

"What changed?" Rey asked. Old headlines flashed before her eyes—  _Like grandfather, like grandson!— Trouble besieges First Order's rising star!— Kylo Ren checks himself into Passages, Malibu!_

 

"I almost killed my father." His voice was low and blank, as if he had repeated that sentence to himself over and over again in the hope that it would hurt less each time. "I can't even remember why I went ho— why I visited my parents that weekend. Looking back, I think I just needed— an overcast sky, or something. A little rain. New York seemed nice— like,  _appealing,_ you know? So I just... hopped on the next flight back East and showed up at their doorstep. They weren't very happy to see me." He turned to her, moonlight slanting on the self-deprecating curl of his lip. "The last time I visited had been a year before, and suddenly there I was, coming off a week-long bender, bloodshot eyes and slurring a mile a minute. So, yeah, my dad gave me hell for upsetting my mom, and I—"

 

He drew to an unceremonious stop, like his next words required a strength that he did not possess. She gingerly scooted towards him, until her legs were dangling off the bumper and the soles of her feet were skimming across dew-damp grass. And she thought, then, of some obscure movie she'd seen years ago— silkworms and nineteenth-century Japan, a man saying,  _Maybe I just need to tell someone about it, and that someone is you._ Here and now, above the lights of Hollywood, that someone was her.

 

Rey leaned forward; Kylo was hunched down enough that she could rest her chin between his shoulder and his neck, the ends of his hair tickling her cheek. She wondered if she could  _still_ blame the alcohol for what she was about to do, but, deep in her heart, she knew that the real culprit was the long shadows around them and the way his silence called out to the Jakku orphan that not even fame and fortune could consign to oblivion.

 

Groggily, her upper body curved around his, her sternum molded to his broad back. She turned her head and kissed his neck— the smooth, warm spot directly above the collar of his suit. He shuddered at the touch, sagging against her. Encouraged, she continued her ministrations, her lips pulsing a gentle, delicate tattoo to his skin, and it wasn't even all that sexual, not really, because, when you were lonely for so long, sex wasn't what you missed most.

 

"It always happens the same way. Every time I replay it in my mind," Kylo muttered. "It starts in the living room. Mom's on the couch with her head in her hands, she's just popped some Advil because nothing's changed since high school and I still give her the worst migraines. Dad and I are on our feet, we're yelling at each other. I storm out to the balcony for a cigarette, to calm my nerves. He follows me..." He paused again; she hummed something encouraging and soothing under her breath as her lips traveled higher, peppering soft kisses on the edge of his jawline. "And we keep on shouting, and at some point my lighter falls to the floor as he grabs me by the shoulders, begging me to look at him, and I—  _shove_ him—"

 

This was the part where Kylo's voice cracked, the part where Rey was suddenly,  _selfishly_ grateful that the weight of his revelation was cushioned by an amber haze of Chandrilan Blue '439. He tensed, as if he expected her to recoil from the monster that he was, and  _maybe_ she should have.

 

But, instead, she arched upwards, grabbing onto his shoulders for purchase, and she kissed his cheek. He didn't relax as she'd hoped, but one hand left his pocket to run over the silk-clad thigh of hers that was nearest him, his fingers digging shiny indents into her gown.

 

"It went on forever, the fall," he continued. "I thought— I remember thinking— that the eternity of time from then on would be composed of just that, of my father plummeting to the ground below while I watched from the balcony. But he landed well. Like a, I don't know, a cat with nine fucking lives, or something. Broke several bones, had some internal bleeding, went into a coma that lasted a week, but he pulled through. I wasn't there when he woke up. I'd already checked myself into the rehab center."

 

Rey did not say,  _It wasn't your fault._ She did not say,  _Your parents still love you,_ or,  _At least you've gotten your act together now._ She said none of those things because redemption was a dirty word for him, was only a kind of aftermath.

 

Instead, she just sat there on the hood of his car, pressed against his back, holding on to him for ages upon ages, her whiskey-numb lips occasionally kissing a trail up his neck while his palm roamed over her thigh and they watched the moonlight from above fall into the glimmering golden nets of the city lights spread out below.

 

The breeze picked up, colder this time, smelling faintly of the sea. Rey shivered and burrowed closer to Kylo, an act that prompted him to glance at her over his shoulder with a wan half-smile. And it was unfortunately that damned smile, not the alcohol, that made her do what she did next— although, in a roundabout sort of way, it was  _his_ fault. He was the one who brought up  _Almost Famous,_ after all.

 

_"Blue jean baby, L.A. lady, seamstress for the band,"_ she sang softly in his ear, and he bowed his head, his shoulders starting to convulse with silent laughter.  _"Pretty eyed, pirate smile, you'll marry a music man..."_

 

He whirled around and took her in his arms. She was still singing and he was still chuckling to himself when he cradled her face in his large hands and rained slow, chaste kisses on her brow, her cheeks, her jawline.  _"Turning back, she just laughs, the boulevard is not that bad..."_

 

He nuzzled her nose with his, his full lips grazing one corner of her mouth. She giggled, but valiantly stayed in tune.  _"Hold me closer, tiny dancer,"_ Rey hummed to the night sky and the West Coast, as Kylo's lips found her neck, and then her bare shoulders, kissing along the line of bone on one side before dropping to the other.  _"Count the headlights on the highway. Lay me down in sheets of linen..."_

 

When he pulled away, she tipped her face up to him, expectantly, but he shook his head. She frowned. "Do you need me to sing the whole song first? Because I don't remember the rest."

 

He smiled. It was a wide and genuine smile, the corners of his eyes crinkling in the starlight. And, yeah, she could get why he didn't smile more often in photo ops, because his teeth were slightly crooked and he looked kind of goofy, like a boy on Christmas morning, but, to her, it was perfect. Beautiful.

 

He leaned down and rested his forehead against hers, the tips of his long lashes fluttering across her skin. "Maybe another time," he breathed. "When you don't smell like a distillery."

 

"Yeah, I guess making out with some drunken asshole is a bit gross," she grudgingly admitted.

 

"That's  _totally_ why I don't want to." There was a hint of sarcasm in his tone, but, before she could examine it further, he was sliding her shoes back onto her feet and helping her down. She staggered against him, and, oh, gentleness, there was so much gentleness from this giant of a man as he took her by the elbow and guided her into the passenger seat, scooping the hem of her skirt off the grass. and tucking the fabric neatly inside the car. "C'mon, baby, I'll take you home," he rasped, drowsy and gravel-voiced, buckling her in.

 

She snorted. "You're  _serious_ about the Bogie and Bacall thing."

 

He smiled again, and then he kissed her temple before closing the passenger door and walking over to the other side.

 

*

 

Rey woke up the next afternoon with a dry throat and a pounding headache. Memories of the previous night trickled back to her as she lay in bed with the airconditioner at full blast and vivid, white-gold rays of sunlight peeking through the drapes. Her skin prickled everywhere that Kylo's lips had touched, and she closed her eyes and waited for the regret.

 

But it never came, and she was unsure whether to be glad, or afraid.

 

viii.

 

"What's an  _Adsy?"_ Finn asked through a mouthful of ramen.

 

Rey glanced at his phone, the screen blue and white as he scrolled down his Twitter mentions, and then she refocused on the bowl in front of her. "Don't know," she said, chasing bits of soft-boiled egg around with her chopsticks. "Social media's such a waste of time. Why do you even bother?"

 

They were trying out Akim's Munch, the hip new restaurant that had opened near the studio complex. The walls were painted black, the booths were upholstered in red leather, and the accent lighting was garishly purple. The menu offered an "eclectic gourmet twist on street cuisine from all over the world," whatever  _that_ meant. Rey sometimes missed the straightforwardness of Midwestern food, the potato salads and the casseroles and the Reuben sandwiches, but the ramen that she, Finn, Jessika, and Poe had ordered was admittedly hitting the spot.

 

"Oh, my God." Finn started laughing. He shot Rey a furtive glance before reaching across the table to shove his phone in Jessika's and Poe's faces. They each took one look, and howled.

 

*

 

_"Adsy?"_ Kylo repeated in disbelief. He'd been eating lunch in his dressing room as usual, before Rey called him to  _"get your butt over here, Ren, because we have an_ emergency _on our hands."_

 

"I'm afraid so," Jessika quipped, grinning as she perused Google Images. "It's a combination of  _Adam_ and  _Daisy—_ shit, that's so precious. But, I mean, the art is great. Stunning likeness. These kids are  _talented."_

 

"There's  _fanfiction,"_ Poe crowed, like he'd stumbled upon the goddamned Holy Grail as he thumbed furiously through his own phone.

 

"I still don't understand what boats have to do with this," Rey said primly, with as much dignity as she could muster.

 

"It's the whole hero-and-villain thing, I guess." Kylo seemed like he was talking to himself, giving no indication that he'd heard her. He scratched his ear, looking baffled. "Hate turned to love and all that. Pretty standard narrative trope."

 

Finn punched the air with the fist that wasn't holding on to his phone. "I found a high school AU!"

 

Rey glared at him. "What the  _hell_ is an AU?"

 

Before Finn could answer, there was a squeal coming from Jessika. "There's a John/Oscar fanbase, too! Guess what the ship name is?  _ScarJo."_

 

Poe gaped at her. "All this time, I thought my Twitter followers were asking for my opinion on the  _Black Widow_ movie." 

 

*

 

Luke appeared even more solemn than usual when he called Kylo and Rey to his office later that week. "When I started fleshing out the plot of  _Awakening,"_ he said, "I knew right away that I wanted to create a story that encompassed the whole of human experience— all of the things that a person could possibly feel. This included not just first love, but heartache, as well. And learning how to love again."

 

"If what you're getting at is that John and Daisy are going to break up, I don't see what  _my_ character has to do with it," Kylo snapped.

 

"Actually..." Luke trailed off, flashing his nephew what looked like a preemptively conciliatory smile. "The original plan was to introduce a new character— another rebel— who would sweep Daisy off her feet. However, after reviewing previous episodes and gauging audience reactions, the writing team and I have decided to... go another way."

 

His two leads simply stared at him. He sighed, and continued, "Ben. Rey. The two of you have chemistry. Do you remember when we filmed the forest scene in one take? I'd never seen anything like it, in all my years as a director. The show's fanbase picked up on that, as well, and my writers are being inundated with requests to—" He frowned slightly, as if about to quote a phrase that was unfamiliar to him— " _'make Adsy canon,'_ and—"

 

"Are we letting the viewers dictate the show's storyline now?" Kylo scoffed.

 

"Of course not," Luke serenely replied, "but we have to take their inputs into account if we want to keep our ratings up." He held up a hand to forestall the argument that he could in all likelihood sense was about to burst from Rey's lips. "But the primary consideration has always been the quality of the series. The ratings are a  _factor,_ not the be-all and end-all. The writing team and I have been discussing this for a while— tossing ideas around, arguing over motives, mapping out character growth— and this is not a decision that we took lightly, but it  _is_ final, and it is what we feel is best for the show." He clasped his fingers together, subjecting Kylo and Rey to a level gaze. "There is a story in how your characters react to each other. In how you both challenge and disconcert each other. It is a story that ought to be pursued, and I believe it would be a great opportunity for the two of you as actors to try to sell it. The second half of the season will be spent getting Adam and Daisy to the point when they start to see each other in a whole new light. And the finale will end with a kiss." His blue eyes twinkled with a rare hint of mischief. "Like all the great Hollywood romances do."

 

*

 

It took three episodes of dramatic fights and heartfelt conversations for Daisy and John to declare an end to their relationship. While filming the breakup scene, Rey started crying for real, and, although Finn burst into laughter the moment the cameras stopped rolling, the tears streaming down his cheeks were genuine, too.

 

There was a smattering of respectful applause from the crew and their castmates. BB was sniffing loudly into a handkerchief, while the usually stoic Phasma ducked her head from view. Jessika and Poe had done away with all pretense, and were outright bawling in each other's arms.

 

Finn swept Rey into a tight hug, patting her on the back. "We did good, peanut," he whispered in her ear. "That was awesome."

 

"Now I know how David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston felt," Rey tried to joke, but it came out in a wail as snot dripped from her nose.

 

"Aww." Finn drew back to chuck her under the chin. "You'll always be the Rachel to my Ross."

 

"I'd get off the plane for you," Rey tearfully insisted. "I  _would,_ Finn."

 

"Come to think of it, though," he mused, " _I'd_ never cheat on you with a copy girl."

 

"For the last time," Poe huffed, "they were on a break!"

 

ix.

 

And, all too soon, it was the day before the shooting of the season finale's last scene. Rey was mildly surprised when Kylo called to ask if she wanted to come over so they could go through the script— in spite of the  _deluge_ of scenes they'd had to film together after the mid-season hiatus, he'd been tense and distant off-set lately, sometimes darting these odd glances at her with an air that seemed almost on the verge of panic. She had no idea if it was a method exercise for him— getting into the mindset of  _Adam_ wrestling with his growing attraction to  _Daisy—_ or if it was... something else.

 

Rey's Uber driver was a stocky man in his late forties, definitely not part of  _Awakening_ 's main demographic. "You from England, then?" he grunted, after she'd clarified the directions with him and settled into the backseat.

 

"Yes." She wasn't in the mood to tour him through the finer points of her lifestory.

 

The car peeled away from Ileenium Boulevard. "Rains every day in England," the driver hummed. "Foggy, too. Lots of real thick fog."

 

"Well— no."

 

He blinked at her reflection in the rearview mirror, looking puzzled. "I've seen movies. Like,  _Four Weddings and a Funeral._ Those Jane Austen films, my wife loves those. Oh, and  _The Secret Garden,_ and  _Withnail and I._ Rains all the time in England."

 

Rey wisely decided on silence. In any case, the driver seemed to be more interested in doing the talking, because it wasn't long before he asked, "You an actress?"

 

"I used to be a maid," she prevaricated. "At the Death Star."

 

She did the countdown in her head,  _one, two,_ and—

 

"That's where Anakin Skywalker died."

 

_Bingo._ She watched the man watch her reflection nod.

 

"He wasn't alone in that hotel room, when he died," he told her, in an authoritative tone. "Brad Pitt and Joaquin Phoenix were with him. But this was, like, in 1990, or a little earlier, right? So, before either of them got famous. That's why there wasn't anything on the news, 'cause Brad and Joaquin were just two young punks who didn't matter back then."

 

"Anakin mattered, though," Rey couldn't stop herself from musing.

 

"Shit, yeah." The driver whistled through his teeth. "The man was crazy. He was foaming-at-the-mouth insane. But he was larger than life. And that's why he bowed out early, 'cause, people like that, they were never meant to live too long."

 

Rey thought about Lor San Tekka's article, which had ended with a quote from Obi-Wan Kenobi, who had, perhaps, when it came right down to it, known Anakin Skywalker best.  _"He had spent himself,"_ Obi-Wan had told the press, shortly after news of the death broke.  _"He burnt himself away like a comet."_

 

*

 

Eventually, Rey's Uber dropped her off at the exclusive Korriban District, a sprawl of intimidatingly well-manicured lawns and posh buildings just  _begging_ to be TP'ed. Kylo's apartment was, she decided three seconds after he let her in, the most  _un_ lived-in place that she'd ever seen, as cold and stark as a magazine spread. He'd gone for the minimalist look, and his living room was an expanse of white walls and white floors and space-age steel furniture, except for the handsome black leather couch in the middle of it all.

 

_This isn't a home,_ Rey thought, chewing on her bottom lip.  _This is all just... hard edges and loneliness._

 

She glanced around in vain for any sign of the picture frame that she bought for him in Spira, but all the surfaces were bare, and disappointment was a sharp twinge in the pit of her stomach. However, she maintained a neutral expression on her face as he offered her the couch. She sat down and dug out her copy of the script, while he drifted over to the French doors leading to the balcony and drew the gauzy white curtains over the glass, obscuring them from any paparazzo who might be sneaking around with a zoom lens.

 

Rey spoke first. "How do you feel about... this new plotline?" she asked him, carefully. "We haven't discussed it yet." They hadn't discussed much of anything, really. Not even what happened on the night of the '439 launch.

 

"I don't know how to feel," Kylo grumped. He was leaning one shoulder against the French doors and glaring at the curtains so intensely that it was a wonder he didn't burn a hole through the fabric. Today, he was wearing khakis and a pale blue Oxford shirt, the sleeves rolled up, and he looked all sorts of strung out and haggard, as if he hadn't slept in days.

 

"I mean," Rey said, "I think it works. In the context of a show about how love is never easy but still worth fighting for— 'our story is epic, you know'?" His gaze darted to her, then, and she flashed him an uncertain smile. "'You and me. Spanning years and continents. Lives ruined, blood shed. Epic.'"

 

He rolled his eyes. "Of  _course."_

 

"Hey,  _you_ recognized the quote right off the bat," she retorted, stung.

 

He stared out the window again, and an eternity passed in deep, brooding silence. "Rey," he said at last—  _snapped,_ to be more accurate about it. "I—" He cleared his throat, still not looking at her. "May I kiss you?"

 

Her heart stopped. She wasn't proud of the way her mind immediately leapt to,  _Yes,_ but she was even more horrified by the fact that the word that emerged from her mouth was, "Why?"

 

Kylo dragged a hand over his face, rubbing fretfully at the bridge of his nose. "I want it to be real, the first time." His voice was hoarse. Broken. "I... need you to be moved. I don't know. It's stupid. I am being stupid." A muscle ticked along his jaw. "Never mind."

 

It clicked into place, why he hadn't kissed her the night she'd  _smelled like a distillery,_ and why he'd been so withdrawn these past few weeks. This was going to be so complicated, but,  _oh,_ somewhere in the pop culture center of her brain was a jumble of flickering silver screens, and Julia Roberts was  _just a girl standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her,_ and Ryan Reynolds was telling Isla Fisher on a foggy Manhattan street that  _I kept the book because it was the only thing that I had left of you,_ and Logan Echolls was smiling at Veronica Mars in the half-light,  _no one writes songs about the ones that come easy._

 

Rey stood up. She closed the distance on legs that felt like lead, and, as she approached, Kylo's brown eyes slanted to her, his unruly hair so black against the filmy white curtains, his pale face so full of hope and fear in the soft haze of afternoon.

 

When she stopped walking, there was only a few inches of space between them. When she spoke, it was in nothing more than a whisper. "Make it real, then," she breathed. "Move me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Neimoidia](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Neimoidia/Legends) is the homeworld of a species known for their obsession with clothes.
> 
> [Teneniel Djo](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Teneniel_Djo).
> 
> [Chandrilan Blue '439](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Chandrilan_Blue_%27439).
> 
> [Tahiri Veila](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Tahiri_Veila).
> 
> Vivian Rutledge and Philip Marlowe are from [_The Big Sleep_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Sleep_%281946_film%29), starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, a.k.a my Old Hollywood OTP. (His pet name for her was "Baby.")
> 
> ["All My Friends"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3mrYxPLSH4) by Snakehips is the song that plays at the party, while the song that plays in the car is "San Francisco, Take Me Back" by Band of Annuals (I can't find a YouTube link for that one, but it's on Spotify). 
> 
> The ["Tiny Dancer" scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHH3FoJUEbg) from [_Almost Famous_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almost_Famous).
> 
> [Akim's Munch](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Akim%27s_Munch).
> 
> I remember reading that David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston cried for real while filming Ross and Rachel's breakup scene in the second season of [_Friends_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friends), but I can't find a source.
> 
> The conversation between Rey and her Uber driver is, once again, based on "The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories," while Obi-Wan's quote is from the Kinski article.
> 
> The Julia Roberts movie is [_Notting Hill_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notting_Hill_%28film%29), while the Ryan Reynolds and Isla Fisher movie is [_Definitely, Maybe_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitely,_Maybe), and, of course, Logan and Veronica are from [_Veronica Mars_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veronica_Mars).
> 
> [Korriban](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Korriban).


	4. The Hand That Feeds the Dead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A certain scene in this chapter (you'll know it when you read it, trust me) was inspired by Taylor Swift's "Style." Many thanks to [fluffybananabread](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffybananabread/pseuds/fluffybananabread) for reminding me of that song, and for providing one of the "Who was with Anakin Skywalker when he died" rumors that you'll find here. I also want to thank [lizzpercush](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lizzpercush/pseuds/lizzpercush) for adding a new Kylo Temper Alert Level (TM).
> 
> I'm loving all the comments, kudos, and bookmarks so far! Thank you, guys, you're awesome. We have officially stretched to five acts, because I can't stop writing in this 'verse. The last installment will be, like, ridiculously long in order to wrap up all loose points, and I'm very open to suggestions about what to include.
> 
> Also, look, M-rating! *exits stage right with dramatic cape toss*

x.

 

_Just this once,_ Kylo thought as he stared at Rey bathed in the clear, pure daylight streaming in through layers of glass and muslin.  _I just want to know what it feels like. Just give me this once._

 

She was wearing a dove-gray cardigan that shaded her eyes to a dark emerald hue, but, when she tilted her chin up to him, stray sunbeams caught on the brown in her irises and turned them into flecks of gold. He could drown in those eyes forever, and maybe he had, maybe he would have, in another life.

 

He stepped forward, cradling her face between his hands. His thumbs stroked the freckles on her cheeks, the sensitive spots below her ears, the delicate lines of her jaw. She shivered, a flutter of sooty copper-tinged lashes, a slow tremble of features that were almost elfin in the brilliant diamond afternoon. Her lips quivered slightly, involuntarily, and he could wait no longer, the two of them suspended there in the wavering heart of light and all that silence.

 

He bent down and claimed her mouth, his eyes drifting shut. Every brash instinct was screaming at him to just go with it, to just plunge ahead and take what was offered, but he was determined to be patient, to make it good for her, to sear every nuance of this moment into his memory and keep it with him for the empty years that lay ahead. He knew it would only be once.

 

Rey's lips were soft beneath his own, closed and statue-still, but driving him out of his mind, nonetheless. Kylo slanted his head until he found the corner of her mouth and was kissing at the crease there. "Baby," he muttered, couldn't stop himself from calling her that, the endearment a frail ghost whispered into her skin, "baby, open your mouth. Rey," he begged, hoarsely, "kiss me back, sweetheart."

 

And, when she did, his already tenuous control slipped. He groaned, low and desperate in the back of his throat, sweeping his tongue into her mouth. She was pliant at first, so warm and sweet, swaying at the force of his ardor. His arms dropped to hold her steady, encircling her waist and crushing her against him, while her hands slid up his chest and he was sure she could feel the wild staccato of his heartbeat on her palm.

 

But he was too urgent, too demanding; eventually, she stiffened in his arms. It took all of his willpower to gentle the kiss, soothing her with an affectionate little nibble on her bottom lip. She sighed into his mouth, and it sounded like a benediction. It made him feel the way he felt every time  _2001: A Space Odyssey_ opened to the cosmic swell of Richard Strauss' "Thus Spake Zarathustra," with a pale red sun blazing over the silver-blue curve of an Earth cast in shadow.

 

At last—  _too soon—_ he lifted his head from hers so that they could both catch their breath. He opened his eyes first, was blessed to watch her come back to herself, parted lips and fluttering lashes before all that green and brown and gold were fully revealed and gazing up at him once more. He was shaking. He had not expected a mere kiss to feel like that— previous assignations had been rough and impatient fumbles designed to expedite his release and his partner's. Slow, tender kisses had not suited the image he projected to the world, and no one had ever wanted that from him. Lust was easy; lust, he could handle. But now, looking into Rey's eyes in this room of white heat, Kylo Ren understood  _desire,_ for the first time in his life. And it terrified him.

 

He wanted more.

 

It was that realization that had him swallowing a lump in his throat, his fists clenching uselessly at his sides. He couldn't go through all of that again, not with her— their faces plastered all over the Internet, the dirty speculations in the gossip rags about secret weddings, pregnancy, cheating, breakups, the supposed marks of his vile temper— he couldn't let that happen to her. Not when she was the last good thing left in this false and jaded town.

 

He turned away, striding over to the coffee table and picking up his copy of the script. "We should get to work," he told her, brusquely.

 

"All right." There was a hint of confusion in Rey's voice. Some wariness. Maybe a little bit of hurt.

 

He gritted his teeth, and spent the rest of the afternoon adopting a cold, businesslike demeanor, keeping as much distance between the two of them as possible. It wasn't very Rick Blaine, because at least  _that_ guy had his snappy lines to fall back on, and Kylo ran out of those a long time ago.

 

*

 

_I'M CRYING FAM ADSY IS CANON!!! #AwakeningSeasonTwoFinale_

 

_Best. First kiss. Ever. #Adsy #Awakening_

 

_Yaaas, Daisy, climb that emo trash prince like a tree! #AdsyIsAGo_

 

_Omg they used "Body Gold" for Adam and Daisy's kiss scene I AM LIVING. #AwakeningS2_

 

_Theremin sonata, motherfuckers!!! #SUCKMYDICKANTIS_

 

_Nothing in me was not made by #Adsy._

 

*

 

Hollywood was a ghost town, with the major shows on hiatus and most of the big names jetting off to beaches and mountains and European cities. Finn and Poe had gone on a ski trip, their first vacation as a couple, while Jessika was visiting family in Portland. Even Luke had flown East, to spend a week with Han and Leia, and Kylo felt strangely bereft as he wandered the noticeably less hectic Coruscant streets one sleepy Sunday morning in search of breakfast, glowering at what few paparazzi were still hanging around while their colleagues were off chasing celebs halfway across the world.

 

He was waiting for the light to change at the crosswalk when he heard it— that clipped, nasal voice that had never failed to make him roll his eyes in the time before, and it was comforting to know that some things didn't change. Too bad he was wearing sunglasses that hid his display of contempt.

 

"Ren."

 

"Hux," Kylo grunted, glancing out of the corner of his eye at the lanky, red-headed man who had come up to stand beside him.

 

"Traveling on foot now? Resistance paychecks must be  _considerably_ slimmer."

 

"You didn't exactly yell that at me from the window of a passing car."

 

" _My_ apartment isn't on the other side of town," Hux retorted.

 

"It's called  _fresh air,"_ Kylo drawled, his gaze fixed on the road. "It's good for you." God, the pedestrian light was taking  _forever_ to blink green.

 

Hux was silent for a while. Just when Kylo dared to hope that his two-time on-screen nemesis and perennial off-screen petty rival had learned the art of shutting up, he spoke again. But it wasn't a snide insult or a curt dismissal, as Kylo had been expecting. "We have just wrapped  _Starkiller,"_ Hux announced, invoking the project that had been delayed for ages while the studio scrambled to find a replacement for Kylo and reshoot all his scenes. "I will not be renewing my contract with First Order. I leave for New York in a month, and I do not believe I shall return here anytime soon."

 

"Early retirement, is it?" Kylo scoffed, careful to disguise his shock at the news.

 

"More like a change of career. I have an offer to star in a play."

 

Kylo  _did_ turn to look at Hux, then. The other man seemed— not happy, not exactly, it was doubtful that he had it in him to feel so plebeian an emotion— but... lighter. Younger. As if the years were falling off his austere features like snow.

 

"You know what," Kylo mused, grudging yet sincere, "I see it, Hux. The stage would suit you."

 

The redhead's pale brow creased as he inspected the statement for any sign of veiled sarcasm. Finding none, he nodded in a manner that was civil even if it was not particularly friendly. "Take care of yourself, Ren." He, too, sounded like he meant it.

 

The light changed. Hux crossed the street first, leaving Kylo behind.

 

*

 

He ended up at Goodvalor's Little Bivoli, an "organic, all-natural, fair-trade" cafe within sight of the soaring marble spires of the historic Imperial Theatre. Kylo opted for al fresco seating, and the giggling, star-struck waitress brought him the  _Coruscant Times_ along with his brewed coffee and almond butter croissant. He rarely checked the entertainment section if he could help it, but a blurb caught his eye— there was a new book about his grandfather soon to hit the shelves, with the author claiming definitive proof that Alex Trebek and Burt Reynolds had been at the Death Star with Anakin Skywalker when he died.

 

Kylo's disdainful snort overlapped with a heartbreakingly familiar voice saying his name. He stifled a groan, wondering what it was about this day, that it seemed to be going through the list of all the people that he didn't want to run into.

 

"Fancy seeing you here." Rey offered him another one of those uncertain smiles of hers that did horrible, twisty things to his stomach. "I thought you'd be out of town, like everyone else."

 

He took off his shades and blinked up at her. She had never looked more like Audrey Hepburn than she did this morning, her glossy chestnut hair pulled back in an elegant chignon, all smoky eyes and red lipstick and a little black dress that made her legs go on for miles.

 

"Hot date?" His wry tone fell flat, mostly because he was genuinely curious, and she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

 

"Yeah," she said— but, before his soul could shrivel up and die, she added, "with Sidoras Bey."

 

"Oh. The photographer." Relief. This feeling crashing through his bloodstream was  _relief,_ so strong that it made his hands go numb. This girl was going to drive him back into rehab.

 

"I went to his studio at the crack of dawn, and I've only just gotten out," Rey explained. "I think I hate photoshoots more than I hate events, and that's saying something."

 

Kylo shrugged. "Better get used to it. You're an It Girl now."

 

She grimaced, and prolonging this conversation with her would be a very bad idea, but she shot his self-restraint all to hell. He could gladly spend the rest of his life listening to her talk. It was that damned accent— he should  _never_ have watched  _The Mummy_ at such an impressionable young age. "Did you always want to be an actress?"

 

She hesitated, and it belatedly occurred to him that it was fucking  _ridiculous_ to conduct a discussion on life goals when she was hovering at his table while he remained seated. Willing himself not to blush at the social awkwardness that he thought he'd long outgrown, he sprang to his feet and pulled out the other chair for her, an instinct left over from his mother's lessons on etiquette that not even the fast life could shake.

 

"No, I did not always want to be an actress," Rey wasted no time in saying once they were both settled, "but I've always loved the medium. Back in England, we had movie night at the orphanage every Saturday, and then I became obsessed with a whole bunch of Netflix streams once I got to America. But, acting? No." She paused when the waitress brought over the menu, studying it for a few moments before deciding on chickpea pancakes and tea, because,  _of course._ She resumed her story once the waitress had disappeared back into the cafe. "My mother and I, we lived with her second cousin and his family, on their farm. They're nice," she stressed. "Very good, kind people. When I left, they assured me that I'd always have a place with them, if I ever decided to come back."

 

"Why did you leave?" Kylo asked.

 

Rey shrugged. "I wanted to see— more of this country. Freeways, oceans, new cities, borderlines, anything. I spent a few months hitchhiking, getting odd jobs, heading out whenever I got bored. Eventually, I drifted to California, then further in. Into Coruscant. And, you know what? I wasn't expecting to stay here that long. Even before Luke offered me the role, I'd already stayed longer than I usually do." She glanced around, at the street streaked with passing cars and the gaudy billboards and the palm trees swaying in the breeze. "There is... a weird energy to this place. I've never dreamed of  _making it big,_ as they say, but being here makes me feel like I'm part of something grander than myself. Of course, we know it's all illusion, but— listen, have you ever tried asking anyone, some random person, about their screenplay?"

 

He shook his head.

 

"They've all got them," she continued. "The guy at the gas station. The studio accountant. Our waitress, even, I'm willing to bet. Everyone's writing a screenplay. Everyone wants to make a movie. Everyone wants to be immortal."

 

The waitress came back with Rey's order, and, try as he might, Kylo could not  _quite_ mask his revulsion at the sight of a virulently yellow stack of uneven pancakes topped with avocado, hummus, and salsa.

 

Rey giggled. "Finn and I were just curious about the health food thing at first, but we ended up genuinely liking it. Although," and here her voice softened with Omaha, with farmsteads and endless plains, "I still get a hankering for a big ol' steak from time to time."

 

Kylo's lips twitched, despite himself. "That's cute. A 'hankering,'" he teased, in a passable imitation of her British accent, and her eyes widened and she laughed for real.

 

They ate their breakfast— although it was more like the tail-end of brunch now— in companionable silence, too famished to devote much effort to actual conversation. When the plates and cups had been cleared, Rey dabbed at the golden crumbs on her red lips with a napkin, regarding Kylo with a tense, expectant sort of curiosity. He knew— he just  _knew—_ that she wanted to talk about the kiss. Not the one in front of the cameras and beneath the glare of setlights that had required a dozen takes to perfect, but the soft, slow one in his apartment. The one that had been real.

 

But what could he tell her?  _Sorry I'm such a fuck-up. Sorry, I shouldn't have asked it of you._ It had been a moment of staggering weakness, best forgotten. He called for the check, instead, and the way her slim shoulders drooped was almost too much to bear.

 

"I've got it," he snapped, when she started to dig into her purse.

 

"What?" She frowned at him. "No, don't be ridiculous—"

 

"It's fine." He put his card down on the table, shooting the waitress such a pointed look that she hurried away to swipe it before Rey could protest further.

 

Afterwards, Kylo told himself that it was only his desire to make amends for his surliness that had him offering to walk Rey home— "or, you know, to wherever you're going," he hastily corrected when she fixed that odd, hesitant gaze on him once more.

 

"The bookstore," she said, and he nodded, putting his shades back on as they both got to their feet. A mischievous half-smile softened the corner of her mouth and she peered up at him through her lashes.

 

"What?" he demanded, glaring at her from behind dark lenses.

 

"It's just—" She waved a hand over his outfit like a magician unveiling her final trick, if the trick came packaged in a black suede jacket and a white T-shirt and a pair of ripped jeans. "You look kind of like James Dean."

 

"You're one to talk, Audrey," he responded in kind.

 

They left the cafe side by side, and it could have been such a normal thing, just a casual Sunday stroll— a date, even. He wanted so badly to hold her hand or drape an arm around her shoulders, tucking her snugly against him. He already knew their bodies were a perfect fit; he'd held her often enough on the red carpet, and a few times on set, where they had fought with each other and hidden from hostile forces together and, just recently, betrayed everyone else.

 

"Thanks for breakfast," Rey said.

 

Kylo grunted, small and noncommittal in the back of his throat, watching surreptitiously as she tucked a loose strand of brown hair behind her ear.  _In another life,_ he thought, with that same old ache,  _I would have given you everything._

 

*

 

"Sir." Phasma's voice was cool and calm and a stark contrast from the shrill ringtone that had jarred Kylo out of a restless night's sleep. "Would you like me to dispatch a statement to your publicist, for immediate release? Shall we use the standard denial template, or would you prefer something more open to interpretation?"

 

"What the hell are you talking about?" he growled. He was not a morning person, even during the best of times.

 

"Yesterday's photos of you and Rey, sir. It's stirred the vultures into a frenzy."

 

Ending the call, Kylo pulled up the first website that came to mind.  _SPOTTED: Rey and Kylo Ren out and about in North Hollywood! "Awakening" co-stars in steamy off-camera affair?!!_ screamed JustJarJar.com— rather ambitiously, Kylo felt, considering that the pictures were merely of him and Rey eating at Goodvalor's Little Bivoli, then strolling along the pavement, then disappearing into the bookstore. But of course the dating rumors would be coming in hard and fast, now that their characters had kissed on the show.

 

There was one photo, in particular, that he stared at for longer than necessary. They were walking down the street, her in her tight little dress, him with his rumpled hair and his hands in his pockets. She was dimpling up at him and he was bowing his head to catch whatever it was that she was saying, and his eyes were hidden from view by the shades but the line of his mouth was gentle in a way that it never was for anyone else. He tried to remember what they'd been talking about at that particular moment, and, yes, he was sure her nose had crinkled exactly like that when she told him about the time she and her third cousins in Nebraska attempted to prove that cow tipping  _wasn't_ an urban legend. And now here that moment was, all over the tabloids for any number of random faceless strangers to see. Just one more thing that couldn't stay his.

 

xi.

 

"Cut!" Luke's voice rang through the closed set, peopled only by Kylo, Rey, and what crew were absolutely needed. "Can we try again, from the top? Rey, you need to turn your head to the left when Ben kisses your neck. And, Ben, you have to plant both hands on the wall, sort of frame Rey in."

 

There were a few muttered curses from the two barely-dressed actors as they sprang apart, sweating more from the humid temperature in the studio than the passion that they were simulating. At first, there'd been nothing that the makeup department could do about Rey's fierce blush at being stripped down to her underwear, but even  _that_ had faded once self-consciousness gave way to exasperation after the sixteenth failed take. She shot Kylo a glum look as several assistants scurried forward to help them back into their clothes, rearrange their hair, and dab powder on the too-shiny spots on their faces.

 

Kylo scowled at her in return, seething with annoyance. God, sex scenes were a  _bitch_ to film. Why were Adam and Daisy even going at it only four episodes after their first kiss, anyway? Maybe  _Awakening_ 's fictional authoritarian government had the right of it, treating love like a disease. It sure as hell drove people insane.

 

"Action!" Luke called, and, yeah, the fact that his  _uncle_ was directing this made it ten thousand times worse. Kylo was fairly certain that he would never feel clean again.

 

He and Rey said their lines, mashed their lips together at an angle that was carefully choreographed to give the illusion of  _tongue,_ and grappled with zippers and waistbands until most of their clothes fell to the floor. They were kissing as he backed her up against the wall, and, this time, he accidentally trod on her foot in the process. She stiffened at the sharp pain, but, before it could ruin the take, he soothed her the only way he could, the only way he knew how— gently tugging her bottom lip between his teeth in the same manner that had prompted her to sigh into his mouth that afternoon in his apartment, long ago.

 

She relaxed. At this point in the shot, her hands were supposed to snake up his bare back, and then tangle in his hair. This time, her fingers lightly stroked the shell of his ear as they passed— an unscripted, affectionate gesture too fleeting to be conspicuous on-camera, but it sent such a feeling of raw sweetness crashing through his system, overwhelming his senses, nearly blanking out his mind.

 

And it was just his rotten luck that the  _totally fucking unfair_ laws of male biology ruled that the emotion be translated into a sudden  _twitch_ inside his costume's tight leather pants.

 

Kylo did not freeze in place, because the show, such as it was, had to go on. He broke the kiss and pressed up against Rey as the script dictated, desperately trying for a subtle slant of his hips that wouldn't bring her into contact with his growing hardness. It was futile, as their lower bodies were separated only by the cotton strip of her panties and the leather of his pants, and soon he found himself in the unprecedented and utterly  _humiliating_ position of watching his co-star's eyes widen as she felt his hard-on nudge above her thigh.

 

He wanted the ground to crack open and swallow him whole. He wanted to storm off set and come back in a few decades, when she would have probably forgotten all about it. He wanted to fall at her feet and apologize.

 

Then he noticed her dilated pupils. The hitches in her breathing, the unsteady rise and fall of her chest against his. The way her fingers had tightened in the waves of his hair, so close to practically ripping a handful out of his scalp.

 

And he was lost, lost, lost, like the people who made  _Ishtar_ and had no idea what they were doing, like Howard Hughes in  _The Aviator_ who was possessed by a dream of shapely wings and destruction, like Richard Burton looking into the eyes of a doomed Egyptian queen.

 

He lowered his lips to the crook of her neck. She remembered to turn her head to the left, in order to provide the cameras with a better angle, but there was nothing choreographed in how her spine  _arched,_ thrusting her soft breasts into the planes of his bare chest. And it was instinct, primal and pure, that had him lift a palm to the cup of her bra and  _caress,_ so gently, so greedily, her dazed gasp spurring his hips to roll forward, settling himself at the apex of her slim thighs— 

 

"Cut!"

 

"For the love of—" Kylo bit the rest of the sentence into Rey's neck. She squeaked, and he slumped forward, resting his forehead between her breasts as he tried to regain a semblance of control.

 

"That was good, guys." Luke's voice sounded like it was coming from a great distance, from another world that lay across the sea of blood roaring in Kylo's ears. "But it was too, um,  _tender._ You're trapped in an underground cellar while a battle rages on, and you're still technically on opposite sides. You don't know how much time you have. You can't afford to take it slow. Also, Ben," he added, with a trace of wry,  _mortifying_ humor, "hands on the wall, please. Not on my heroine." 

 

And, precisely because Kylo Ren was a fuck-up, precisely because he was already so fucking  _gone,_ he nuzzled at Rey's collarbone for a moment— just for a moment— before he pulled away. Her blush had returned in full force, her hazel eyes glassy with something that looked like arousal, and he inwardly snarled all manner of threats at his dick to get it to stay  _down_ as the set assistants approached to prep them for yet another take.

 

*

 

And, wouldn't you know it,  _nth_ time was the charm.

 

*

 

_"Lead me into your dreams of oceans," Adam whispered to Daisy, holding her gaze in the dim light as the world collapsed around them. "Take me there, and let me stay."_

 

*

 

Kylo wasn't even acting anymore when Rey rushed towards him and he scooped her up in his arms. He kissed her with all the wretched, pathetic need that clawed at his heart, and she met him halfway with equal fervor. And, shit, that was  _definitely_ her tongue in his mouth, that was  _definitely_ a strangled groan escaping from his throat as they practically tore at each other's garments. They were both in the zone now, each little thing clicking into place the way it had beneath the green roof of Takodana. It was magic. It was madness, the cameras forgotten and the planet on fire.

 

He slammed her back against the wall, more forcefully than he'd been coached to. She yanked at his hair in retaliation, and,  _Jesus,_ to hell with the script, he was mouthing at her jaw and trailing frantic hickeys down her neck, his hands braced on the wall and the bulge in his pants rubbing her through her panties as she whimpered and hooked one leg around his waist to pull him closer—

 

"Cut!  _Perfect."_

 

*

 

Her lips were swollen and there were dark red bruises all over her neck. Even as the sight of her like that sparked a rich current of sinister delight in his bloodstream, the shame and self-revulsion dug all the way to his bones. This was not how he wanted it. This was not how he would have treated her if—

 

— if it had been _real—_

 

But they hadn't been Kylo and Rey in those few, addled moments. All the world was a stage, and they were both  _so good_ at saying their lines. He shrugged into the robe that one of the assistants handed him, and he went back to his dressing room without another word.

 

*

 

"So, I heard the music guys arguing before we left." Poe popped a fishball into his mouth and continued speaking as he chewed. "They can't decide what song to layer over the—" He grinned at Kylo and Rey from across the table— "y'know, the great  _shebang—"_

 

Rey groaned. "Can we please stop calling it that?"

 

"Would you prefer 'the big frickety-frack,' then?" Finn asked, prompting her to reach over and clap a hand across his smiling lips.

 

The cast had absconded to Akim's Munch after filming their respective scenes, because, okay, the place was near Resistance Studios and it  _did_ serve great food, even if it was  _mindblowingly pretentious,_ as Jessika complained. Kylo would never in a million years admit to these people that he actually  _liked_ the black walls and the red leather upholstery and the purple lights. It reminded him of a secluded Japanese restaurant in Manila that he'd ducked into after giving his handlers the slip, one dreary afternoon several years ago while filming his third movie with First Order. He'd ordered sushi and spent a couple of hours watching rain coat the windows, blurring the metal streets outside, with no one knowing who he was or telling him what to do.

 

Of course, this time was different, the California sun hammering at the tinted glass walls and Rey's foot accidentally bumping his shin as she crossed her legs beneath the table, but, listening to his castmates chatter away, he felt that same sense of peace.

 

"Music didn't even used to be a big deal in television," Jessika was pointing out, "until the early 2000s, when shows like  _The O.C._ made it a centerpiece."

 

_"Mmm, whatcha say,"_ Finn and Rey dutifully chorused.  _"Mmm, that it's all for the best—"_

 

Poe laughed. "You know the music supervisor on  _The O.C._ was also the same lady behind  _Grey's Anatomy?_ Remember when Meredith was looking from McDreamy to, shit, that other guy—"

 

"Oh, my God, yeah," said Finn, "and the scene cut to black on—" He quickly hummed through the lyrics— " _'Would you lie with me and just forget the world?'_ That was iconic."

 

"I think music was important even before then," said Rey. "After all, who among us can't hear 'I Don't Want To Wait' without immediately remembering  _Dawson's Creek?"_

 

_"I don't want to wait for our lives to be over,"_ Poe belted out, drumming the rhythm on the tabletop while Finn gamely provided the secondary vocals.  _"I want to know right now what will it be..."_

 

_And even_ before  _then,_ Kylo mused, looking back on all the old movies, thinking not just about "Thus Spake Zarathustra" blaring through the depths of space, but also a bar, a piano, a woman's soft dulcet tones murmuring,  _Play it, Sam. Play "As Time Goes By."_

 

It wasn't long before Rey steered the conversation back to the original topic. "So, what's the music people's problem with mine and Kylo's scene?"

 

"One of them wants a screaming rock anthem," Poe replied, "to fit in with the general atmosphere of battle. The other guy says it should be something more subtle, but still, like,  _brimming with passion,_ or whatever. With themes of light and darkness."

 

"I guess we'll find out what they decide soon enough," said Finn.

 

*

 

And, yeah, in the end, it was the second guy who won. The bridge of "Cosmic Love" was a faint thread beneath Kylo's and Rey's characters' heated conversation in the underground cellar, the two of them glaring at each other with ill-concealed desire,  _so I stayed in the darkness with you._ The last chorus exploded when their lips met,  _the stars, the moon, they have all been blown out,_ and it soared as he slammed her into that goddamned wall,  _no dawn, no day,_ and they were panting and he was grinding his hips into hers and she was throwing her head back and closing her eyes,  _I'm always in this twilight, in the shadow of your heart,_ and he moaned into her neck as the scene faded to black.

 

xii.

 

Before the third season of  _Awakening_ aired, Luke and the main cast flew to San Diego, for Comic-Con.

 

Kylo tried to derive some pleasure from it, the endless crowds chanting his name, the girls asking for selfies and autographs. He tried to tap into that same old rush he had once felt at being so adored, but that person— that arrogant, hedonistic boy with Old Hollywood living in his head, who enjoyed these things— fell with his father, shattered along with his father's bones. He was thin and stretched-out, wondering if any of these lit-up, devoted fans would stand by him if word ever got out about what really happened on the balcony in New York, or just how cruelly he had broken Tahiri Veila's heart. Or even the small things— like his terrible morning breath, or how his old cravings would sometimes hit so badly that he'd huddle in a corner of the room and rock back and forth until they abated.  _Most men fell in love with Gilda,_ Rita Hayworth had said, long ago,  _but they woke up with me._

 

Kylo's brooding state was exacerbated by the fact that he and Rey were dancing around each other in some kind of anxious, uncertain waltz. The sex scenes were still difficult to shoot, but, after that first one, he'd gotten semi-used to seeing her unclothed and she now thought nothing of being manhandled by him. But, God, did he wish that  _Adam_ and  _Daisy_ could just find a stupid bed and take it slow.

 

Off set, they were still friends, but the tension that kept building between them during filming and the relentless rumors that they were dating colored their every interaction, turning it sour. They had slipped into an unspoken agreement to not be alone with each other, if they could help it.

 

He brightened up slightly during the  _Awakening_ panel, when fans were pelting them with hard-hitting questions about character motivations and what went on behind the scenes. He still loved talking about his work; at least  _that_ hadn't changed.

 

"Will Adsy— sorry, Adam and Daisy," giggled one girl, "have their happy ending?"

 

Kylo felt rather than saw Rey's gaze flicker to him. "That's up to the writers," he drawled into the mic, "but it would be nice if they do. I hope they do. What they have is truly special. It has all the makings of an epic romance. I'm biased, of course, but she's his first love. I think that's something momentous."

 

"Would you compare them to Romeo and Juliet?" asked another girl.

 

"Nah. More like Tristan and Isolde." And Kylo really, really could  _not_ help glancing over at Rey then, as her fists balled on her lap. "You know—  _it was our love that brought down a kingdom. Remember us."_

 

*

 

Later that night, he had absolutely no idea how his castmates ended up invading his hotel room, but here they all were, anyway.

 

"We thought you needed cheering up," Jessika breezily informed him. "Your alert level's been at  _Sulking in the Rain_ for, like, weeks."

 

Rey was still avoiding looking at him directly, but she flashed a smile as she shoved a gallon of Ben & Jerry's Mint Chocolate Cookie into his arms. They ate from the container, all of them crammed on his king-sized bed— Finn, Jessika, and Poe sprawled out in the middle while Rey perched gingerly at the edge and Kylo leaned against the headboard, frowning and trying to maintain the distinct impression that he was  _not_ happy to be plagued by company in the middle of the night.

 

Fifteen minutes later, Unkar Plutt was smirking at them from the television screen. He was the oily, foul-mouthed host of a trashy talk show that only aired at a late hour when people were either desperate or stoned enough to find his jokes funny. Currently, he was going through a list of "The FIFTEEN Biggest Things In Hollywood!!!"

 

_"Number three— Rey's forehead!"_ Unkar crowed, to a grating laugh track. A photo of Rey flashed on the monitor, zoomed in on the aforementioned body part.  _"You could land an airplane on it."_

 

"What the  _fuck?"_ Finn roared, throwing his spoon at the TV while Jessika shrieked in outrage. "That fucking  _asshole—_ when we get back to Coruscant, I'm gonna beat him into the next  _century—"_

 

"I'll hold him down for you," Poe growled.

 

"Guys, it's fine." Despite her words, Rey looked humiliated, her cheeks pink as she pushed the tub of ice cream away, like she'd lost all appetite.

 

Kylo stared at her in her pajamas and with her three-bun hairstyle coming loose, and wasn't it just like this entire shitty industry, to make this strong, beautiful girl think that there was something wrong with her—

 

_"And now,"_ Plutt boomed,  _"number one, the_ biggest _thing in Hollywood— Kylo Ren's nose!"_ Laughter and applause blared through the speakers, and the old Kylo would have probably thrown a lamp at the fucking TV or something, but he couldn't even muster up enough fury for that. Instead, he grabbed the remote and aimed it at the screen— now proudly displaying another zoomed-in photo, this time of his nose— and switched it off.

 

"Party's over," he said, in a tone that brooked no arguments, and his castmates took that as their cue, picked up the half-empty container of melting ice cream, and scurried out of the room.

 

Except Rey.

 

He cocked his head at her, wondering why she was still there, sitting on the edge of his mattress, the graceful lines of her profile turned to him. She was biting her lip and studying the carpeted floor like it was the most interesting thing in the galaxy, the silence rolling on for a few more minutes.

 

"For the record, I  _like_ your nose," Rey said at last, in the most fervent, sincerest tone that Kylo had ever heard. "I think it makes you look sweet."

 

_"Sweet?"_ he echoed, in disbelief.

 

"Yeah." She smiled at him a little, and, fuck, there was no other explanation for this piercing warmth that swept through him, flooding his entire pathetic being with waves of light. He'd seen this coming, after all, that night in Monument Plaza.  _Fuck._ He was in love with her.

 

With a stifled groan that sounded like surrender, Kylo reached out to haul Rey into his arms. She went willingly, the cotton material of his shirt bunching up beneath her fingers as she splayed her hands over his chest. "And, also for the record," he breathed, kissing her forehead, "to me, you are perfect."

 

"You stole that from  _Love, Actually,"_ she accused, nipping at the line of his jaw.

 

His laughter was cut short—  _choked off,_ when his hand slipped under her pajama top to run along the smooth column of her spine and find that its path was unhindered by a bra. He rolled her over onto her back, and the room's soft lights cast a burnished glow on her skin as their lips met in a languorous, searching kiss that was so unlike all the ones they'd shared onscreen. She smelled like the hotel's orange blossom soap and she tasted like mint chocolate ice cream and—

 

— and god-fucking- _damn-_ it, someone was knocking at the door, _shit—_

 

He released her mouth, burying his face in the crook of her neck.  _"What?"_ he yelled to the absolute  _jerk_ outside the room, whoever it was. Beneath him, Rey flinched at the loudness of his voice, the wrath that crackled through it, and he pressed an apologetic kiss to her shoulder. In response, she canted her hips up into him, and he sighed into her clavicle as he thrust back, just once, just to feel her squirm so  _deliciously—_

 

"There's an automatic lock on this thing." It was Poe. "Can you let me in?"

 

_"Why?"_ Kylo spat. It worried him a little that he couldn't seem to keep his hands off of Rey; his fingers were traveling under her pajama top, skimming the smooth valley between her breasts as she gasped and shuddered, too wrung out on sensation to actually  _care_ that they were about to be caught  _in flagrante delicto._ Or almost  _in flagrante delicto,_ anyway. They both still had their clothes on. It was a goddamned tragedy.

 

"We left the spoons," Poe explained.

 

"You've  _got_ to be kidding me." Rey's hazel eyes were glazed over, but a spark of irritation had started to creep through. "Ignore him, babe, maybe he'll go away."

 

Kylo liked the sound of that plan  _almost_ as much as he liked her calling him "babe" in that ridiculously hot accent. He wondered what other endearments he could coax out of her, and that tantalizing prospect had him finally,  _finally_ cupping her left breast in the palm of his hand.

 

She keened, arching up, and he dove down to kiss her again.

 

"Come  _on,_ man," Poe whined from outside the door. "The ice cream's turning into soup."

 

Cursing viciously under his breath, Kylo pushed himself off the bed, but not before pinching Rey's nipple in an unthinking gesture brought about by the odd mix of frustration and lust. She giggled, and he couldn't help but flash her a wry smile.

 

By the time Kylo opened the door for Poe, Rey was on her feet. "What were you guys even  _doing_ in here?" Poe demanded as he retrieved the spoons from the mattress— although either Kylo or Rey must have kicked one off, because it was on the floor.

 

"Planning world domination," Rey quipped. "With my big forehead and his big nose, the two of us will be unstoppable."

 

"Either that, or the enemy will see us coming from miles away," Kylo grunted.

 

She slapped his arm, and he would have caught her wrist and then laced their fingers together, but— Poe was there.

 

"We're all in Jessika's room," the other man said. " _Clueless_ is on HBO."

 

Rey squealed in delight, and, before Kylo knew it, she was grabbing his hand and leading him out of his suite, into the hallway.

 

"I am  _not_ watching  _Clueless,"_ he snapped.

 

"Yeah, you are," she shot back.

 

He sighed. Yeah, he was. You just had to go with it, sometimes.

 

*

 

The next day, several hours before their flight back to Coruscant, Kylo went down to the hotel bar for coffee. Luke was already there, his eyes fixed on the television set that was more than halfway through  _Dark Lord._

 

Kylo sat beside his uncle, and watched with him in silence, for a while. Finally, he asked, without removing his gaze from the screen, "What made you decide to take the name 'Skywalker'?"

 

"He was a broken man when I met him, for the first and last time," Luke replied. "I was around ten years old. Maybe younger. He showed up at the house, and my parents— that is to say, mine and Leia's adoptive parents," he corrected, "let us talk. It was awkward, to say the least. Your grandfather was not a nice man. He wept and raved about his legacy, bragged about how everyone would remember Vader for all time. And something about that didn't sit right with me. When I started directing, I took his last name as an act of pettiness. To remind myself that there  _had_ been someone else before Vader, even if I'd never met that person. It wasn't some grand gesture of forgiveness, as the press likes to spout. It was my own form of rebellion. But I think..." Luke sighed. "I think maybe forgiveness  _did_ come. Later on."

 

Kylo continued watching the screen. He knew this movie like the back of his hand. In about seven minutes, Vader was going to kill his wife. "I don't suppose you know who was really with him when he died," he mused. It was a joke. Or maybe not.

 

Luke chuckled. "I heard it was John Travolta and Brigitte Bardot."

 

Kylo found himself laughing, too. Laughter had come easier to him, ever since Rey. "Yeah, okay." He shrugged. "Why not?"

 

*

 

_Kylo Ren ships #Adsy!!! #SDCC_

 

_Guys, Kylo said that he hopes Adam and Daisy get their happy ending. My skin is clear, etc. #ComicCon_

 

_How EPIC was the #AwakeningPanel?!! The entire room went NUTS!!!_

 

_OTP: TRISTAN AND ISOLDE. #Adsy #AwakeningPanel #SDCC_

 

_Does anyone else think that Rey and Kylo really ARE dating? The way they looked at each other at Comic-Con, man..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [You got that James Dean, daydream look in your eye, and I got that red-lipped, classic thing that you like!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CmadmM5cOk)
> 
>  
> 
> ["Body Gold" by Oh Wonder](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ufw5oIcw2o).
> 
> [Goodvalor's Little Bivoli](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Goodvalor%27s_Little_Bivoli).
> 
> What "Adam" says to "Daisy" in the underground cellar scene is actually cribbed from one of my canon-verse fics, [Shatterpoint](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6092611/chapters/13965037).
> 
> ["Thus Spake Zarathustra" as used in _2001: A Space Odyssey_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-QFj59PON4).
> 
> [The infamous "Hide and Seek" scene on _The O.C._](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-UHvYNzg0E) MMM WHATCHA SAYYY
> 
> ["Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol as used on _Grey's Anatomy_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFgk9PfjKF8).
> 
> ["I Don't Want to Wait" by Paula Cole as used on _Dawson's Creek_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Htv9WDItIgA).
> 
> ["As Time Goes By" as used on _Casablanca_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do2olZ49M54).
> 
> My choice of "Cosmic Love" by Florence + the Machine was inspired by [that _Nikita_ scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OVNhNpSbEc) ;)


	5. Kinski Paganini

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this was originally intended as the last update, a combination of Act V and the epilogue. However, after much deliberation, I have chosen to separate the two, the reasons being that Act V's word count is monstrous, and it covers heavy emotional territory that was exhausting even for me to track. I figured that we could all do with a bit of a breather before I write (and you read) the epilogue.
> 
> A couple of technical notes before we begin: 1) Unlike previous chapters, this one is told from alternating points of view in order to wrap up loose ends, and; 2) My inner grammar freak is dying a slow death because I'm working on software that can't produce the accent marks. Trust me, French-speaking readers, it hurts me as well.
> 
> Many thanks and much love to everyone for all the support. In particular, I would like to acknowledge irelands for this fic's brand-new "relationship status" tag and DayDreamerNightThinker for the Anakin Skywalker rumor. Hope you'll let me know what you think of this update! (And, to tide you over until the epilogue, I have been known to occasionally fill Reylo prompts on my [blog](http://kylorenvevo.tumblr.com/tagged/reylo).)

xiii.

 

It had taken her a very long time to come to terms with the fact that she fantasized about her co-star's arms more often than was healthy. They were usually hidden away by his jackets, his long-sleeved button-downs, his black costume on the show. The few occasions she'd seen him in a T-shirt over the years had been enough to make her mouth go dry, and, the first scene with him naked from the waist up, her brain had damn near short-circuited at the sight of those powerful biceps, at all the sinewy muscle corded beneath pale skin. Oh, how she longed to stay in the circle of those arms forever, feel them shift under her fingertips, how she longed for him to hold her up and surround her with all that quiet strength as he kissed his way down her neck and— anyway, it was terrible.

 

Ever since Comic-Con, though, most of her fantasies had involved grabbing those arms and forcing him to look at her as she cried, _What are we?_ right into his stupid, sulky face. Maybe she would even shed a few delicate tears, why not— everyone working in Hollywood turned into a diva after a while, anyway, and she figured she was entitled to at least a _few_ dramatics.

 

Rey's memory of the hotel room in San Diego already felt like it belonged to someone else. They had been back in Coruscant for almost a month now, and she'd gotten nothing from Kylo save several teeth-grittingly platonic lunches at casual restaurants, a few text messages telling her to "have a good day" (a good day?  _A good day?),_ and, whenever they had an early-morning shoot, he'd show up with those whole-wheat bagels that she liked. There had been  _zero_ kisses— just a montage of light, fleeting touch, his hand on her waist as they entered a room, or idly stroking her nape as they stood around set listening to last-minute instructions and pep talks.  _What are we,_ indeed.

 

"First of all," said Jessika, taking a sip of her salted caramel latte before leaning back in one of the sinfully comfortable olive-green armchairs at Maz's, "no one likes whole-wheat bagels. You're all just fooling yourselves. Secondly, okay, listen— these are the things that I know about Kylo Ren."

 

Rey paused in the act of stirring a packet of muscovado sugar into her own plain brewed coffee as she gave Jessika her full attention. The other girl had been living in Coruscant for nearly a decade now; she was privy to a ton of gossip.

 

"He's not a playboy, despite what the tabloids would have you believe. Yeah, he had girlfriends from time to time, but it wasn't like he slept with every single thing that moved. He was always so wrapped up in his career, you know? So obsessed with trying to become the next Anakin Skywalker. I think he's calmed down a bit, but that chip on his shoulder is still something that you have to take into consideration, all right?"

 

"Sure."

 

"He wasn't a playboy," Jessika repeated, "but he never loved any of them, either. That French supermodel, she complained about it to her housekeeper, who also does my apartment and told  _me._ Then there was that other actress, the one who cried about it on  _Ellen._ Hell, Tahiri's  _Promises_ album was all about it. I guess, what with the substance abuse and the fanatic work ethic, there wasn't much of his heart left to go around, but that's hardly an excuse, is it? So, be careful. Just because he's nice to  _you_ doesn't make him any less of an asshole."

 

The words stung, but Rey needed to hear them— needed that sense of perspective. She was glad that she'd worked up the courage to explain the strange situation to Jessika, who hadn't been all that surprised by the news. "I'll keep that in mind. Thanks. And you won't—"

 

"Breathe a word to either Finn or Poe until  _you're_ ready to let them into the loop. Although, I have no idea how they keep missing it. Probably because they're too wrapped up in each other all the time." Jessika rolled her eyes. "I  _told_ Poe that we could just call room service for more spoons, but he said you'd never forgive him if you missed  _Clueless."_

 

"He was right," Rey said, diplomatically. "But, Jess, how were you able to tell, even before?"

 

Jessika was quiet for a while, absentmindedly swirling her latte around in its cup. "It's the way Kylo looks at you when your attention is elsewhere," she finally said. "In all my years in this crazy place, I've never seen anyone look at somebody else like that."

 

*

 

Kylo's Bugatti TIE idled on the curb, the sun glinting off its black hood and sending bright splinters dancing into Rey's eyes as she left Maz's. She slipped on her oversized shades, ducked her head, and practically  _jogged_ to the car, but it was no use. A swarm of paparazzi followed her, click of cameras, volley of insults yelled out in the hopes of provoking a middle finger or any other equally juicy reaction.

 

There were a  _ lot  _ of them today; they managed to encircle her, cutting off the path so that she was forced to stop moving. They hemmed her in, and her throat closed up in panic. It was so crowded, she couldn't  _ breathe— _

 

A tall frame shouldered its way into the throng. More flashes, louder voices, as Kylo grabbed Rey by the waist and pulled her into his side. She instinctively tucked her cheek into the lapel of his jacket, and his arm tightened around her in a reassuring squeeze.

 

"Are the two of you fucking?" demanded one photographer, and Kylo used his free hand to bat the camera away. The man cursed, crouching down to pick up his equipment that had clattered on the sidewalk, and then whimpered when Rey vindictively stepped on his fingers. This was one of the few times when she  _ wished  _ she'd worn heels.

 

Her head spun as Kylo shoved and elbowed the paps aside without uttering a single word. There were more crude remarks and insinuations— "Kylo, I thought you liked your women with curves!"— "Rey, is it true that Kylo prefers it rough?"— "Kylo, you ever give it to her in the ass?"— "You two sure look like you know what you're doing in your sex scenes..." They made it to the car, and he nearly ran over the foolhardy photographer who planted himself in front of the bumper and attempted to snap a picture through the windshield. The man leapt back just in time, hollering at them as the TIE peeled away.

 

"I hate them," Kylo snarled, once they had cleared a couple of blocks and the world had quieted down to the steady hum of the engine. "I hate all of it."

 

Rey stared at her lap, at her hands that had only just stopped shaking. "I don't want to go out for lunch anymore," she admitted, in a small voice.

 

"All right." In contrast to his previous tone, this one was bitter and defeated. "I'll drive you home."

 

She glanced up sharply, and her heart  _ clenched. _ He looked so sad against the view of Hollywood streets rolling past. "No, I mean— can't we go to your place? We'll order in, or something— I don't know—" He started to shake his head, and,  _ Don't do this to me, you big, lumbering idiot,  _ she thought, rather uncharitably and at odds with the fact that she sounded like she was pleading with him.  _ Don't let them ruin this for us.  _ "Hey, how about we watch that old French movie you like? You promised you'd show it to me someday..."

 

The car veered to the curb, screeching to an abrupt halt. Rey winced as the seatbelt snapped against her torso, but the shock of that was  _ nothing  _ compared to watching Kylo slump forward, gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles turned white, sucking in such great big gulps of air that the clench of his stomach was visible beneath his shirt.

 

She unbuckled her seatbelt so that she could throw her arms around his neck. "Babe—" she couldn't stop herself, the endearment came so easily to her, like breathing— "I don't care what they say about us. They don't know how good you are to me. They don't know  _ anything."  _ She kissed his ear and raked her fingers through his soft, dark hair, and these weren't the things that you said to someone who wasn't even your boyfriend, but— "It doesn't matter," she murmured, trailing more kisses down the side of his face, which was slick with tears. "I don't care, my love, I really don't. Please, let's just—"

 

Her words were cut off when he suddenly turned to her and reciprocated the embrace. He whispered unintelligible words into the skin of her throat, words that sounded like  _ God  _ and  _ love  _ and  _ fuck,  _ his large hands trembling as they traced haphazard patterns along her spine. And, when he pulled away, it was too soon for her liking, but he mollified her with a quick kiss to the tip of her nose.

 

The drive to Korriban District was conducted in silence, as was the walk into his apartment, through that living room all done up in walls of white. They left their shoes at the threshold of his bedroom, and their lips met once the door closed behind them, with him stooping as he shucked off his jacket and her almost on tiptoe as she clutched at his shirtfront. But it was a kiss meant to comfort; there was no urgency, no prelude to something more because—  _ Are the two of you fucking? _

 

Despite her earlier bravado in the car, she flinched against him the moment she remembered all those vile questions being hurled at them, and he immediately scooped her up in his arms, bridal style, and deposited her on the bed. The mattress sank beneath their combined weight as he propped his body over hers and sprinkled light butterfly kisses on her temples, her eyelids, her cheeks, her jaw. When he finally lifted his head, she was dazed and shuddering from something that she couldn't name, something that went far beyond lust and was infinitely more terrifying. He smiled down at her slightly, sad and hopeful all at once, the midday sun peeking through the blinds and threading waves of gold into his hair even though his eyes remained the color of endless, star-strewn night in the shadows of his bedroom.

 

_ Chiaroscuro,  _ Rey thought, her fingers reaching up to glide along the bow of Kylo's full lips, learning the shape, the soft swell.  _ Themes of light and darkness. _

 

*

 

They watched  _ Hiroshima mon amour  _ on his laptop, Rey turned on her side while Kylo held her from behind. On the small screen, a man and a woman were moving together, naked in black and white, torsos rising and falling, covered in a fine layer of dust.

 

_ "Tu n'as rien vu a Hiroshima,"  _ the man told the woman.  _ "Rien." _

 

It was a broody, surreal film, painstakingly shot, achingly slow. It wasn't Rey's style at all, but she could see why Kylo liked it— the sustained emotion, the themes of memory and longing and time. The movie was a crash course for anyone who wanted to understand Kylo Ren, and so she drank in each moment that would normally have bored her to tears and carefully read each subtitle even though the tiny font gave her a mild headache. It was a story about love and war and fallout. About lost souls blinking in the bewildering light left by the atomic bomb. It was a story about taking grace where you could get it.  _ Ecoute-moi. Comme toi, je connais l'oubli. _

 

*

 

A few days later, they filmed in an abandoned warehouse that Luke had rented because he wanted the kind of panning, wide-angle shots that couldn't be doctored with camera tricks and video editing. Luke Skywalker rarely had terrible ideas, but Rey suspected that this was turning out to be one of them. The day was hot and muggy, the air positively  _ stifling.  _ Kylo was sweating through his costume, Finn and Poe were in the middle of one of their extremely rare spats, and Jessika was cranky because she'd overslept and had had to forego dropping by Maz's for her daily caffeine-and-sugar fix.

 

Tempers were running high on set. Everyone was missing their cues and messing up their lines, and, yeah, this day was definitely  _ not  _ making the cut for the behind-the-scenes YouTube featurettes.

 

"Hey, Phas," Rey heard BB hiss at the other personal assistant, "what's the alert level?"

 

_ "Frowny Face,"  _ Phasma replied.

 

BB cocked their head. "Just  _ Frowny Face?  _ Are you  _ sure?" _

 

"Your boss isn't exactly a beacon of warmth and cheer right now," Phasma said, eyes narrowed, and, wow, okay, things were  _ really  _ bad if even the PAs were snapping at each other.

 

Rey turned her gaze to set when Luke called, "Action!"  _ Testor  _ had just been shot by  _ Adam,  _ and  _ John  _ and  _ Oscar  _ had pulled her to safety behind a stack of metal crates.

 

"I'm fine," Jessika whispered, clutching at the spot on her orange Rebellion uniform that was oozing with fake blood. "You have to go. You have to get the blueprints—"

 

"Daisy's on it," said Poe. "We're not leaving you, Testor."

 

There was a moment of silence.

 

Poe sighed. "Sorry, yeah, that was supposed to be John's dialogue—"

 

"Stealing my lines now, are you?" railed Finn. "Couldn't be content with taking  _ the last slice of pizza—" _

 

"Cut!" Luke huffed out.

 

As an assistant hurried forward with a copy of the script for Finn and Poe to quickly examine, Rey made her way over to Kylo. His long form was crammed into one of the foldable chairs that they'd schlepped from the studio, lean legs tangled up in his costume's black cape. That forbidding metal mask was in his lap and his head was thrown back, sweat-drenched locks of dark hair plastered to his reddening forehead. His cheeks were red, too, as was his nose.

 

He cracked one eye open at Rey's approach. "Baby, I'm dying," he moaned, in a dour and pitiful tone.

 

"Oh, don't be so dramatic," she chided him, even as her own cheeks flushed. He was always freer with those endearments when he was sleepy or exhausted. Or, in this case, on the verge of heatstroke.

 

Spotting a bucket of ice on the nearby refreshment table, she fished out one of the melting cubes and held it to his temple. He closed his eyes again, a small, relieved breath emerging from his parted lips.

 

"Feeling better?" Rey asked, dragging the ice cube behind his ear and carding her other hand through his damp hair.

 

"No, worse," Kylo hummed, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Much, much worse."

 

But he was leaning into her touch, trying to nuzzle at her wrist, and she was sort of grinning like a fool as she stood over him, and,  _ my God, I'm in love,  _ she thought, with a strange sense of wonder and dread combined.

 

A few feet away, BB was hooking up their iPod to one of the speakers. Catching Phasma's questioning glance, they shrugged and muttered, "Hey, if it worked for Kate and Leo while filming  _ Revolutionary Road..." _

 

BB hit the  _ play  _ button, and the lilting, orchestral strains of "My Heart Will Go On" filled the warehouse. There was a burst of laughter from the harried cameramen, a reluctant smile from Luke. Jessika collapsed against the crates, wheezing with mirth and dripping fake blood everywhere. Finn wandered to the edge of set, shaking his head and trying not to beam. Poe sauntered up behind him, grabbed his wrists, and spread out both their arms in a reenactment of that one, unforgettable scene. The scene that everybody knew— the scene that had ingrained itself deep into cultural memory, just like  _ We'll always have Paris  _ and John Bender raising his fist in triumph as he left the football field.

 

Hollywood was fake. Hollywood was a shlockfest. Hollywood chewed up its darlings and left them in the dust. But, sometimes, you could get moments like that.

 

Kylo made a show of looking annoyed as the tension on set melted away. Rey supposed that this merriment offended his sensibilities as a Very Serious Actor. The last of the ice had dissolved into his skin, and she leaned in closer, pressing her cold fingers to his jawline.

 

_ "Every night in my dreams,"  _ she sang along to Celine Dion, nearly in his ear, watching that narrow, angular face twitch as he struggled not to laugh,  _ "I see you, I feel you..." _

 

*

 

_ "Near, far, wherever you are,"  _ Poe wailed later that afternoon when they were back at the studio complex, bursting out of his dressing room and flinging his arm around Rey's shoulders as they walked down the hallway.  _ "I believe that the heart does go on." _

 

Rey laughed. "Glad you and Finn made up."

 

"Hell, it was a stupid fight, anyway," Poe replied, embarrassed. "Things have been great— more than great, even. I guess some drama was just bound to pop up."

 

"'No one writes songs about the ones that come easy.'"

 

He snorted. "As much as I love  _ Veronica Mars,  _ that's a load of bullshit. Life's difficult enough as it is, you know? Why do we have to find smooth-sailing relationships boring? Why do we have to, like,  _ romanticize  _ complications, actively go around looking for them? If it's there, it's there." He tossed Rey a grin. "Be glad of it."

 

xiv.

 

In September, Kylo was nominated for an Emmy, which he did not win.

 

_ It was a long shot, anyway,  _ people tried to console him. He'd been up against a veteran actor on a long-running show that was gearing into its final season. Sometimes, it wasn't a question of talent. Sometimes, you just had to wait your turn.

 

But Anakin Skywalker had won an Oscar at the age of twenty-five; Kylo Ren was in his early thirties, and, although he applauded along with the rest as the winner strode onstage, a stark chill pierced his heart— a haunting, niggling suspicion that his turn had passed him by. He could already picture next day's headlines, the pretentious thinkpieces making unfavorable comparisons to his grandfather and wondering if leaving First Order had been the right career move— especially since  _ Starkiller  _ had actually garnered critical accolades.

 

"It was an honor just to have been nominated," Kylo informed the sea of microphones that accosted him at the afterparty's red carpet. The press were hanging on to his every word; amidst the flashing lights, their glittering eyes fixed upon him with the bright, hungry gaze of predators, waiting to tear him limb from limb.

 

He breathed a little easier when Rey latched on to his arm. "What are you still doing here?" she playfully demanded, in a loud voice for the benefit of the reporters. "The party's  _ inside." _

 

"Hey, Rey," said a female journalist, "are you disappointed that your boyfriend didn't win?"

 

"He's not my boyfriend," Rey answered with a breezy laugh, "but he's the best enemy love interest I could ask for, and I'm very proud of him."

 

Her cheerful facade dropped as soon as she managed to drag him away. "I hate events," she muttered.

 

Kylo tried to smile down at her, but his entire face was frozen in a tight mask. He  _ could  _ have been her boyfriend by now, maybe, if he'd worked up the nerve to actually broach the subject. After San Diego, he'd tried to do it right— the old-fashioned way, the text-messages-and-lunch-dates-and-little-gifts way, but he'd chickened out once the paps reminded him of just how  _ vicious  _ they could be. No, he couldn't do that to her, she deserved someone better, someone less notorious, with far less baggage.

 

Someone who was actually going somewhere, instead of just drifting along a nebulous sea, no shore in sight.

 

They entered the hall with her arm tucked into the crook of his elbow, the music and the strobes devouring them in an almost solid conflagration of light and sound. He was perspiring in his tux, a sickly film of cold sweat sticking to his skin, and everything seemed like it was happening from a great distance— like he was viewing the sparkling room and its sparkling crowd through arcs of shadow.

 

Rey was playing her part, was smiling and waving at people they knew— even bouncing a little on her silver stilettos, the generous skirts of her navy blue gown rippling with every slight movement,  _ I'll run away with your footsteps, I'll build a city that dreams for two.  _ "I love this song," she explained, looking so content, so  _ young.  _ "Don't tell anyone, though. That's blackmail material."

 

He grunted in reply, and she glanced up at him with a worried slant to her mouth. The next time she spoke, it was to the man behind the bar. "One iced tea and one gin and tonic, please."

 

They sipped their drinks while leaning against the counter, and it wasn't long before they were joined by two high-flying studio execs who looked nearly identical with their staid suits and gelled-up hair. The sort of men who were  _ mentally  _ always wearing sunglasses and barking orders into their phones.

 

Leaving the small talk to Rey, Kylo tuned out most of the conversation as he attempted to compose himself. Her hand was lightly rubbing the back of his arm in a soothing gesture, but even  _ that _ couldn't help. He felt like everyone in the place was staring at him, whispering about him,  _ poor guy, couldn't make it in the big leagues, not at all like his grandfather, what a waste of genes, and I mean also physically, right, like, maybe if he were a little more handsome— _

 

"No, management wouldn't tell us which chalet it was," Rey was saying, which clued Kylo into the fact that one of the execs— shit, he didn't even remember their names— must have asked about her stint at the Death Star, "so I really have no idea..."

 

Exec 1 flashed Kylo that typical industry smile, brittle and oozing with magazine-perfect congeniality. "Mr. Ren, maybe you could settle an age-old debate for us—"

 

"I don't know who was with him when he died," Kylo interrupted, trying not to glare.

 

"It was Sonny Bono and Mary Tyler Moore," Exec 2 confidently declared. "That's extremely hush-hush info, of course. You didn't hear it from me." And he winked at Kylo and Rey in a manner which stated that they were  _ very _ welcome to remember that they'd heard it from him.

 

"This was in, what, 1990?" Exec 1 looked askance at his colleague. "Where the hell would Bono find the time to do coke with Anakin? Weren't they recording  _ Achtung Baby  _ back then?"

 

"Not  _ that  _ Bono," retorted Exec 2. "I'm talking about the one who married Cher."

 

"I had an Uber driver who told me it was Brad Pitt and Joaquin Phoenix," said Rey absentmindedly.

 

Exec 1 clucked his tongue. "Oh, that's so sad. Do you think that Phoenix was haunted by that night, which was why he followed Anakin only three years later—"

 

"Joaquin Phoenix isn't dead, I'm doing a movie with him." Exec 2 sounded exasperated. "You're thinking of the  _ brother." _

 

Kylo put his iced tea down. "Get me a whiskey," he told the bartender. "Neat."

 

"Kylo," Rey muttered under her breath, in a thinly-veiled warning. She couldn't make a scene in front of the execs, of course, not if she didn't want to end up on the front page of next day's tabloids. He could have laughed at the absurdity of it all.

 

The bartender handed him his drink. Kylo took it and walked away, Rey's eyes boring into his back.

 

*

 

_ It's like riding a bike,  _ he mused sardonically.  _ Once you learn how to, you never forget. _

 

First, you got that acrid initial sip over and done with, choking as it burned your throat. Then you continued sipping, taking your time, until that pleasant warmth enfolded you, and  _ then  _ you could methodically work your way through the next three, four, five glasses, because you were invincible and everything went down easier like this, and, fuck it,  _ welcome back, asshole. _

 

"Think you've had enough, man."

 

Kylo wasn't sure if it was Finn or Poe who had spoken. Both were standing in front of him, looking somber.

 

"Let's call it a night, yeah? Let's get coffee, or something. You can't stay here. You're not walking straight and there's photographers everywhere."

 

"They're always everywhere," Kylo croaked. "There's no escape." Sure, you could lose yourself in a crowd for a while, but someone would be bound to notice and call in a tip to the gossip rags. You were a public commodity once Tinseltown got a hold of you.

 

Someone was gently prying the whiskey glass out of his hand, passing it on to Finn. "I'll take care of this," Rey was saying in a quiet voice that seemed at odds with the pounding, bass-heavy music, and then she was leading Kylo to a darkened corner of the hall, near the lavatories.

 

He stumbled after her blindly, trying to anchor himself with the feeling of their fingers laced together, but his head was floating away like some kind of helium balloon and, once she stopped walking, his shitty instincts took over and he cornered her against the wall, kissing her bare neck and inhaling the perfume she was wearing, all peaches and jasmine and so sweet and musky that it made his mouth water—

 

"No." She cradled his jaw in her small hands, holding him still. "This isn't how I want it." She kissed him on the forehead, a soft, chaste kiss that was too good for him. "Let's get you sobered up, okay? I'll drive."

 

He immediately backed away, squinting at her in the dim light. She didn't look disgusted, but, God, she should be.  _ God,  _ to think he'd actually tried to  _ court  _ her. He was a fucking  _ nitwit. _

 

Kylo turned on his heel and made for the exit across the hall on legs that felt like jelly. Rey would stay where she was, because hundreds of eyes were already fixed on him as he staggered through the crowd and she wasn't, she  _ shouldn't,  _ draw their attention. It was business as usual, everyone for themselves, keeping their heads down and avoiding negative press, no hard feelings, Joe Mantell telling Jack Nicholson,  _ Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown  _ after the cops opened fire on Faye Dunaway in shades of black and white.

 

Kylo was nearly at the main doors when he found himself face-to-face with Unkar Plutt. The man grinned at him, shark-like, as those with media passes fell all over themselves to document this latest encounter. Cameras whirred away, and the prudent thing to do would be to smile and shake Plutt's hand, pose for a few pictures,  _ see, we're all friends here, everything's peachy keen, forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown. _

 

But, in his alcoholic stupor, all Kylo could think about was that night in San Diego and Plutt lambasting Rey on his garbage show. Before he knew it, his hand had balled into a fist and—

 

"Kylo, no!"

 

He felt her at his side too late. He noticed that she'd run after him only when it was too late. His fist was already sailing through the air and making contact with Plutt's jaw. There was a sickening crack as the man fell to the floor, and punching someone was  _ never  _ as seamless as action flicks made it appear to be. For one thing, it hurt like a bitch.

 

"Fucker!" Kylo shouted, shaking away the sting in his knuckles.

 

And then he was looking up from Plutt's sprawled form, and into Rey's wide eyes that were not quite brown and not quite green, and people were whispering excitedly all around them and camera flashes and cellphones were going haywire because  _ this  _ was the scoop of the century, Kylo Ren roaring drunk and knocking some talk show host flat on his ass at the Emmy Awards afterparty while Rey tried to stop him. This would be all over the news, all over Twitter and Facebook and Hollywood gossip blogs, everyone scrambling to say they'd been there, they'd seen everything, twisting the story further to make it more scandalous,  _ juicier,  _ and Rey right smack in the middle of it.

 

He wanted to shake her. He wanted to ask her why the hell she'd gone after him, did she have no sense of self-preservation at  _ all? _

 

But he also wanted to hold her. To just gather her into his arms and get out of here, drive away from Coruscant, drive forever, go somewhere safe, away from the prying eyes and the razor-sharp tongues.

 

He couldn't do that, though. And every second that he stood here, staring at her, meant more photos, more buzz. There was no course of action that wouldn't make things worse— except to exit, stage right, and, so, he did.

 

*

 

Kylo's phone was ringing off the hook as his car screamed through the streets, Phasma's and his castmates' and uncle's names taking turns lighting up the screen. He ignored all their calls, even Rey's, no matter how much he longed to hear her voice, no matter how much he needed the reassurance that he hadn't irredeemably screwed things up between them, that they could still be together—

 

No. That was a foolish dream. A young man's dream.  _ Maybe in another life. _

 

He was so insensibly drunk that he had no idea how he made it to his destination in one piece. The stars smiled down on him as he got out of the TIE, and so did the elegant grand chandelier as he stumbled into the high-rise's lobby and negotiated with the front desk. After making the necessary call, the concierge issued him his elevator pass, and then he was gliding up thirty levels and weaving down a plushly-carpeted hallway that lasted forever. That walk felt like a long take, like Martin Scorsese's steady-cam shot following Ray Liotta and Lorraine Bracco as they made their way through the back-ends of the restaurant in  _ Goodfellas. _

 

But all scenes had to end, even the greatest ones. Eventually, Kylo stopped walking. Eventually, blood was roaring in his ears as he knocked on Tahiri Veila's door.

 

*

 

If she was surprised by her ex-boyfriend showing up at her place in the middle of the night, reeking of whiskey and despair, Tahiri didn't show it. Instead, she sat him down in her kitchen and shoved a cup of steaming black coffee into his hands, regarding him solemnly across the marble countertop. He'd never seen her without her signature black eyeliner and dark lipstick before; she looked almost like a different person.

 

"You do realize," Tahiri said at last, once the caffeine had served the necessary jolt to his system and he was marginally more alert, "that it was a mistake to come here. I've just released a new album, and, apparently,  _ you  _ have just caused a scene at the Emmy's afterparty. This news is  _ fresh.  _ Someone is going to tip off the paps any second now, if they haven't already."

 

Kylo began to cry. It was not his finest moment, his shoulders shaking and snot dripping from his overly large nose. He was trapped, everywhere he went. There were no safe places, not for someone like him. River Phoenix had known that, too.  _ I'm a connoisseur of roads,  _ he'd said in one of his last movies before he died, with the wistfulness of an actor who was imbuing the script with a meaning that belonged to him alone.  _ I've been tasting roads my whole life. This road will never end. It probably goes all around the world. _

 

Tahiri sat quietly as Kylo sobbed it out, all his fear and disillusionment and confusion and his painful, bewildering, doomed yearning for Rey. She stared down at the kitchen tiles, avoiding looking in his direction, granting him a semblance of privacy until he got a hold of himself.

 

Finally, he ran dry. His throat was raw and his voice was cracked when he asked her, "Why didn't I love you?"

 

Her sea-green eyes snapped to him. "Really?" she hissed, and he flinched. "After all these years of radio silence, you barge in here at— three in the morning,  _ Jesus—  _ and then you're going to sit there and make me play the part of the long-suffering ex-girlfriend spewing words of wisdom so you can grow the balls to get your shit together? This isn't some quirky fuckboy rom-com. This isn't fucking  _ Garden State.  _ You already know why you didn't love me. You already know what you have to do, Kylo. But you need to hear me say it, because of all those movies floating around in your head." She took a deep breath. "Well,  _ fuck  _ you. I'm not some shitty extra playing a bit role in this mess you've gotten yourself into."

 

Her beautiful porcelain face was as white as a sheet. There were bags under her eyes and there was a hard set to her mouth.  _ He had simply caused too much pain,  _ Ahsoka had said in 1995.  _ It burned away everything else that came after. _

 

"I'm sorry," Kylo said, even though he knew it would never be enough.

 

"We're done here." Tahiri unfolded herself from the countertop and showed him the way out of her condo. "You know what you need to do," she repeated, before she slammed the door in his face.

 

*

 

The next afternoon, Luke Skywalker visited his nephew while the latter was nursing his hangover with greasy eggs and bacon. The TV was on, because Kylo was nothing if not an expert in self-loathing, and a reporter was taking her audience through pictures from last night— Kylo holding a glass of what was decidedly  _ not  _ apple cider, Kylo and Rey in formalwear, eyes locked over Plutt on the floor, who was propping himself up on one elbow and clutching at his jaw, Kylo leaving the afterparty, and— most damning of all— walking out of Tahiri's building.

 

_ "It was a wild night for Hollywood's favorite bad boy,"  _ the reporter purred, with a glitzy smile.  _ "A relapse into alcoholism, a fistfight at the Emmys, and a reconciliation with a former flame— all in the span of a few hours! If the rumors of Kylo and Rey dating are true, does this mean that he cheated on her? With his ex?" _

 

Luke silently picked up the remote and turned the TV off. Kylo sunk lower into the couch.

 

"Your mother's legal team has contacted Mr. Plutt, and he will not be pressing assault charges," Luke announced, after a while. "You got lucky, Ben."

 

Yes, he had. Just like he'd gotten lucky when Han Solo's vitals stabilized and the senator swore through her teeth that her husband had accidentally fallen off the balcony. Just like he'd gotten lucky when her lawyers found the loopholes that got him out of his contract with First Order. So much luck. So much unconditional love all the way from the East Coast, Han leaving him brisk, cheerful voicemails,  _ Hey, kid, your mom and I watched your show last night, you were great!— How are you doing, Ben, how about let's catch up? You can come here or I can fly out there, whatever, let me know— It's Leia's birthday, son, give her a call, won't you?— _

 

"Uncle," Kylo whispered, "I can't do this anymore."

 

Luke nodded. "All right." He reached out a hand to clap Kylo on the shoulder. "Just give me some time to work out the details. Just hold on for a little while longer." He patted the top of his nephew's head, just like he'd used to when Kylo had been a child. "All right, Ben. All right."

 

xv.

 

Rey's publicist issued a statement, the usual PR blurb for times like these.  _ My client has no knowledge of what caused the fight, and wishes Mr. Plutt well. She would also like to reiterate that she has no romantic involvement with Mr. Ren, and she hopes that the press will respect his privacy, as well as that of Ms. Veila's. _

 

But, of course, to hear the tabloids tell it, Rey had gotten mad at Kylo for drinking, and then he'd gone off and cheated on her by having wild makeup sex with Tahiri.

 

She had no knowledge of what had transpired at the musician's place— only that he'd been photographed leaving it. And, well, even if something  _ had  _ happened— it wasn't like they were together. From a logical point of view, Kylo hadn't cheated on her.

 

From a  _ Rey  _ point of view, though, the man was going to  _ die. _

 

*

 

When the media shitstorm abated two days later— news got old fast, in a town that was always looking for the next big thing— Rey felt safe enough to go out for a run. She had a favorite route, one that took her along Endor Avenue and right past the hotel where she used to work. It was a relatively quiet and secluded area, with a smooth pavement and enough slopes to get her blood pumping.

 

Halfway through her run, it started to drizzle.

 

Rey was not as annoyed as she should have been, because the Death Star was beckoning invitingly and it would be nice to see Teng Malar and the old gang again. She ducked through the old, stately doors just as the rain came pouring down in an earnest, violent crash.

 

Management was only too happy to see her and grant her access to the staff areas. After three years— or was it closer to four, now?— most of the maids and bellboys had moved on. Rey chatted with the ones she recognized, said hello to those she didn't, and spent the next hour in the kitchen, signing autographs and answering questions about the show and her co-stars. To think that she used to eat buffet leftovers here, in between sweeping floors and turning down beds.

 

It was the off-season; there weren't many guests around. When the rain stopped, Rey accompanied Teng as he mopped up the slippery length of white tile that ran along the side of the garden-view rooms. The air smelled like wet grass and damp earth, and she honestly never thought she'd  _ ever  _ miss England, but the gray sky made her nostalgic. That was all right, wasn't it? It was all right to remember where you came from.

 

"Why did you encourage me to audition?" she asked Teng as he used a tough-bristled push broom to sweep several dewy, wind-blown leaves out of the walkway and onto the well-manicured lawn. "How did you know that I would make it?" He'd told her something flippant back then, about how she had eyes like Audrey Hepburn's, but, if there was more to it than that, she needed to hear it now.

 

Teng grinned at her, his weathered face creasing into a fine collection of crow's feet and laughter lines. "Been working here seventy years, my girl. God's truth. I'm old as Methuselah. Started out as a bellboy when I was sixteen and never looked back. 'Course, I'm near ninety now, and my daughter's begging me to retire and live with her. Might just take her up on that offer soon." He coughed. "Anyway, I've seen 'em all come through here— the film people, the famous. This old place used to be quite the hotspot, back then. They'd have parties here, with liquor and drugs and goings-on you'd hardly credit. You know  _ Hearts of the Old Republic?" _

 

Rey shook her head.

 

"One of the biggest movies of 1926, right up there with  _ What Price Glory  _ with Victor McLaglen and Dolores Del Rio and  _ Ella Cinders  _ starring Colleen Moore. You heard of 'em?"

 

"No."

 

"Yeah, I didn't think you would have. They were old news even to me, even when I was a teenager." Teng chuckled. "Anyway,  _ Hearts of the Old Republic.  _ They had the wrap party for it here at the Death Star, and, around thirty, thirty-five years later, they called everyone together for a reunion. A sort of anniversary party. The hero and heroine of the movie— Revan and Bastila Shan— were there. Do you know...?" He glanced at Rey, and seemed satisfied when she shook her head again. "Big, big names of the silent era, those two. One of Hollywood's first power couples. 'Course, they were already in their sixties when I saw them in person at that anniversary party, but, still, I was floored. By Bastila, especially. And that's who you  _ really  _ reminded me of."

 

"I look like her?" Rey asked, already planning to Google the woman once she left the hotel.

 

"No," Teng said, and she blinked. "You just have that same..." He waved his hand, vaguely, as if trying to find the words for a feeling. "Listen. She was a fine-looking dame even at sixty, and I saw some of her 1920's movies, including  _ Hearts,  _ and she was gorgeous back then. But she wasn't... the most beautiful woman in existence, if you get what I mean. In her day, though, she was the queen of the silver screen, finer than Mary Pickford or Lillian Gish or Louise Brooks or Theda Bara. It wasn't because of her looks. Frankly, back row of the chorus had a dozen girls prettier than her."

 

"Then what was it?"

 

"She was a star." Teng shrugged. "That's what it means to be a star, my girl."

 

They had reached the edge of the walkway now. Here, another length of paving stone snaked through the grass, leading to the burbling koi pond in the middle of the garden. "Now, in the  _ sixties,"  _ Teng continued, "the film people still partied here, and I was right in the middle of it. Bette Davis, John Cassavetes, Dick Van Dyke, Julie Christie, Deborah Kerr, Marcello Mastroianni. Saw 'em all. Then the seventies, the eighties..."

 

He trailed off, apparently lost in memory. Rey's gaze wandered down to the garden path; it was one of the hotel's historical attractions, each paving stone containing a star and a name. Names that she didn't know: Clara Kimball Young, Linda Arvidson, Vivian Martin, Norma Talmadge, Olive Thomas, Mary Miles Minter, Seena Owen, and on and on.

 

"It was like there were gods in those days," Teng muttered. "The stars of the old times, they were painted in silver light. They were  _ giants.  _ And, when you saw them in person, they were  _ still _ huge. People believed in them."

 

_ The man was crazy,  _ Rey remembered her Uber driver telling her.  _ He was foaming-at-the-mouth insane. But he was larger than life. _

 

"Teng," she said, "was somebody really with Anakin Skywalker in the chalet, on the night he died?"

 

"He died alone," Teng said flatly, old as Methuselah and unblinking. "It doesn't matter whether there was anyone with him or not. He died alone."

 

*

 

When she walked out of the hotel, Kylo was there, leaning against his car parked on the curb and gazing up at the building with his hands in his pockets.

 

"Are you stalking me?" she asked.

 

"No," he replied, with uncharacteristic gentleness. "I just thought I should finally see this place. I didn't know you'd be here."

 

Rey wasn't all that surprised. It was just like the night she found him sitting on that bench in Monument Plaza, and just like how she'd used to work where his grandfather had breathed his last. Sometimes you had to let go of coincidence, and accept fate.

 

What  _ did  _ surprise her was how she felt when she saw him. There was no surfeit of rage, none of the desire for confrontation that she'd been bracing herself for. Hell, despite the gloomy weather, she didn't even feel like pulling a Ryan Gosling in  _ The Notebook  _ and asking  _ "What do you want?"  _ over and over again.

 

Instead, she was strangely calm. Maybe even a little tired of it all. "I don't understand you," she said as she stood before him in her running shoes and her ratty T-shirt. "You call me inexperienced and bicker with me and act like you can't stand my presence, but then you rehearse with me until we're sick of it and you ask me random questions when you don't want to talk to the press. When I chase after you and bandage your hand, you make fun of me. When I bring you back a picture frame from my vacation, you don't even think to put it anywhere in your lousy apartment. When I tell you to go away, you comfort me while I cry about my mother. You kiss me because you want our first kiss to be real, but then you spend the next few weeks avoiding me like the plague. You make out with me in San Diego and then act really nice and sweet in the months after, but then you just... stop. When I don't leave your side at the Emmys because I want to make sure you're all right, you get drunk.  _ And—"  _ Her eyes flashed a little. It looked like she had  _ some  _ rage stored up, after all— "when I run after you because I don't want you driving under the influence, you go and sleep with your ex-girlfriend!"

 

She waited for him to deny it, but he didn't, and, oh, God, it hurt so much. "Kylo, I don't think you know what you want," she continued, forcing herself to keep talking over the ache in her heart. "I don't think I can keep doing this whole will-they-won't-they dance with you. It is painful and exhausting, and I can't take it anymore. But I'm so  _ afraid _ for you." She stepped closer, looking up at him, letting him see the truth written all over her face. "I'm afraid you're going to end up like your crazy grandfather, and I'm afraid because you don't even seem to realize why that would be a bad thing. You  _ do _ have family, you know. You have friends. But Luke, Finn, Jessika, Poe, and I— we can only do so much. You have to help yourself, before it's too late."

 

She turned away and was about to start walking back to Ileenium Boulevard, but his words stopped her cold. "I'm leaving the show. Uncle Luke is going to write me out in the season finale."

 

"Oh," Rey said, blinking furiously. "Okay, well, thanks for letting me know—"

 

"Rey." Behind her, Kylo's voice was a strained rasp. "Don't  _ do  _ that. Listen to me. Please." A warm, heavy hand dropped on her shoulder, but he didn't whirl her around to face him. Instead, she felt him rest his forehead on her nape. "You remind me of all the old movies," he said, thickly. " _ Casablanca, Gone With the Wind, Roman Holiday, An Affair to Remember, Say Anything, Before Sunrise,  _ shit, even  _ The Way We  _ fucking  _ Were.  _ You're all of them. But that's all I can give you, and that's not fair. So, I'm leaving. Right after we film the finale. I need to go figure some things out. Maybe someday, when I'm a better person, a nicer person— or, like, maybe in another life, you know?"

 

She stared up at the gray sky, where the light was just starting to break through the clouds once more. She wondered if she could ever forget that he had slept with Tahiri. It wasn't like the eternal debate about whether Ross and Rachel  _ were on a break.  _ It was about  _ them,  _ about what they shared and how they knew how each other felt. Or maybe she was the only one who felt it. Maybe Jessika had been right, and love was an unreachable state for him. "I wanted  _ this  _ life, Ben."

 

It was the first time she had ever called him by his real name. He inhaled sharply, and then he pressed a soft, sweet kiss to the back of her neck. "Here's—"

 

"Don't you  _ dare  _ say it," she snapped, and was startled when she laughed a little. "And don't you dare say  _ We'll always have San Diego,  _ either."

 

"Okay." She felt him smile ruefully into her skin. "I won't."

 

*

 

In the months leading up to filming the third season finale, they kept each other at arm's length. Rey had to admit to herself that she was gearing up for the big separation, learning how to live without him in her daily routine, and it wasn't based solely in  _ romantic involvement,  _ either. She couldn't even begin to imagine how the casts of  _ F.R.I.E.N.D.S  _ and  _ That '70s Show  _ must have felt.

 

The  _ Awakening  _ cast threw themselves into shooting the last few episodes with a scary intensity. Every line of dialogue, every choreographed action, resonated in the  _ heart.  _ It was like she, Finn, Jessika, and Poe were determined to give Kylo the best, most  _ epic  _ sendoff. But no one acted better than Kylo himself, as his character grappled with the path that he had chosen, the burning vengeance in the name of a dead father that had turned him into everything he had once hated.  _ When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. _

 

All too soon, it was time for the last act, the ultimate sacrifice. Adam was going to finally make his true allegiance known and distract the Supreme Leader's police force, in order to give Daisy sufficient time to escape. He would be mowed down by bullets, a glorious and noble death. Tragedy made for great TV, after all.

 

They filmed the last scene in Takodana Forest. An hour before shooting began, Kylo knocked on the door of Rey's trailer. "Well, don't cry  _ now,"  _ he warned her in an exasperated tone of voice when he noticed her lower lip quivering as she let him in. "Save your tears for the goodbye."

 

She sat down. He knelt at her feet, to reenact what had happened in this trailer back when they had been filming the second season. She rolled her eyes and grumbled, "You can take the boy out of Hollywood, but you can't take Hollywood out of the boy."

 

He had the audacity to smirk.

 

They went through the script, and, when they had finished, he set his copy down on the floor and rested his head in her lap as she carded her fingers through his hair.

 

"It's not over for you," he mumbled. "You'll see me again. You've got all of that to come. You and me. Time and space."

 

"Oh, my God," she snorted. "You  _ nerd." _

 

But then she leaned down and brushed his hair aside so that she could say the next words into his ear. "Stay with me, come on," she recited, grinning. "You and me. One last run."

 

*

 

Her tears  _ did  _ flow, then, in front of the cameras. Kylo's—  _ Adam's—  _ mask fell to the earth, and the forest was a blur of green leaves and golden sunlight. He cradled her cheek in his palm, and she surged forward to press her lips to his. This kiss was not acting. This scene was not about Adam and Daisy, but about  _ Rey  _ and  _ Kylo Ren.  _ And it was exactly right.

 

When she drew back, she looked into his warm brown eyes and thought about how glad she was that he was getting out, that he was leaving a world that had become so toxic to him, moving on from the glamour and the lies and the shadow of Anakin Skywalker.

 

"I love you," she told him. "Remember. They cannot take it." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The French quotes from _Hiroshima mon amour_ translate approximately to: 1) "You saw nothing in Hiroshima. Nothing." and; 2) "Listen to me. Like you, I know how to forget."
> 
> Years ago, I read that Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio were having a hard time shooting a particular scene in _Revolutionary Road_. During a break on set, someone played "My Heart Will Go On", and Kate and Leo laughed and did their ["I'm flying"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YGfrGKK9Mo) thing from _Titanic_. They were able to nail the scene perfectly after that. I love Kate and Leo so much.
> 
> ["We'll always have Paris"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93WuCPokDr0) from _Casablanca_.
> 
> [The end scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3CUh8v7MNo) from _The Breakfast Club_.
> 
> [The long take](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Sr-vxVaY_M) from _Goodfellas_.
> 
> The "one last run" quote is from _Doctor Who_ 's "Forest of the Dead" episode.
> 
> "I love you. Remember. They cannot take it" is from _Delirium_.
> 
> Rey's conversation with Teng Malar about the stars of old and the final conclusion to Anakin's death is lifted from, again, Neil Gaiman's "The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories." The film "Hearts of the Old Republic", [Revan](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Revan), and [Bastila Shan](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Bastila_Shan) are from Star Wars, but the other names mentioned did exist. They were real.


	6. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end! Have 6600-ish words of fluff and smut, lovely readers, God knows you deserve it. Many thanks to Queen_of_Typos for Awakening's theme song, and to EllieCarina for the awesome prompt, and, of course, to you, for sticking with me. Hope you'll let me know what you think of this last chapter!

xvi.

 

His last week in California was a daze of packing up his apartment and settling legal matters and taping one final interview, after being assured that he would be safely in New York by the time it aired.

 

Phasma drove him to the airport. Right before he got out of the car, she said, all stiff upper lip, "I wish you luck, Sir."

 

He paused in the act of opening the passenger door, and remembered something that Rey had told him, once. "How's your screenplay coming along, Phas?"

 

She darted him a sideways glance. "How did you know I was writing one, Mr. Ren?"

 

"Solo," he corrected. "Ben Solo." Might as well start getting used to _that_ again, even if the name was unfamiliar on his tongue, like it belonged to someone else. "When you're done with your screenplay, send it to me. I'll get some people to take a look." After all, what good were connections if he couldn't help out the woman who had put up with him for almost a decade? God, had he really been in it that long—

 

Phasma nodded, as cool and pristine as ever, but a small smile flitted at the corner of her mouth. "Thank you, Mr. Solo. That would be lovely."

 

*

 

His parents sent a car for him. He'd asked them not to pick him up in person, because  _Senator_ Organa-Solo's fearsome bodyguards were the stuff of legend; as much as he hated the paparazzi, he didn't actually  _want_ any of them to end up in the hospital after getting a  _hot tip_ that Kylo Ren would be landing in JFK.

 

But, oh, when he let himself into that old apartment using the spare key he'd thought so many times about throwing away, and his  _mother_ was smiling and crying as she wrapped her arms around his neck while his  _father_ beamed over her shoulder—

 

Ben took a deep breath, bent almost in half as Leia clung to him. He was looking into Han's eyes when he said, "Hey, I'm back."

 

*

 

He moped around for a while. It was pretty terrible, but,  _you can take the boy out of Hollywood..._

 

And one day he actually— he actually  _did it._ Fired up Netflix and marathoned the first two-and-a-half seasons of  _Awakening._ Soon the opening theme was stuck in his head, Ruelle singing,  _I can't help but love you,_ as his name and Finn's and Jessika's and Poe's and Rey's and Luke's unfolded over holographic cities in bursts of light. It had always embarrassed him, in the time before, to watch himself on screen, every mole and bump magnified, and, when he hadn't gotten a scene  _exactly_ right, when he went a little too overboard— fuck, his cringes were literally full-body spasms. His first movie premiere had been a  _nightmare,_ and— come to think of it, that was why he'd snorted that first line of coke, wasn't it, someone had promised him that it would make the premieres go down easier...

 

Although he wasn't proud of it, he played  _Adam_ and  _Daisy's_ first kiss over and over again. They were in the Crypts, and he had just unlocked the door to her cell and told her she was free to go, after confessing that he hadn't undergone the procedure that immunized him against  _amor deliria nervosa._

 

_"How do I know that this isn't a trick?"_ Rey hissed at him, magnificent in the half-light, always larger than life even as pixels on his laptop screen.  _"Prove it! Prove to me that you aren't cured—"_

 

And here the camera focused on Ben— well,  _Kylo,_ he'd been Kylo, then— as a muscle ticked along his jaw, and then he  _hauled_ Rey to him and kissed her furiously, music exploding a masterfully precise half-second after their lips met,  _let it go, paint my body gold, take our bodies higher and higher..._

 

"Okay." Ben chuckled to himself, alone in his room, after he watched that scene for the first time. "Okay, that was good."

 

*

 

Eventually, he transferred his moping to the living room because it had a bigger TV. Han joined him sometimes, the two men slouched down at opposite ends of the couch, hardly a single word exchanged between them.

 

And then, one afternoon—

 

_"How nice, you remembered,"_ Ingrid Bergman said, with that  _beautiful_ silver-screen half-smile.  _"But, of course, that was the day the Germans marched into Paris."_

 

_"I remember every detail,"_ Humphrey Bogart told her gruffly.  _"The Germans wore gray, you wore blue."_

 

Han spoke up. "My high-school girlfriend, Bria Tharen— she held my hand for the first time during this scene. We were watching it in her parents' basement. My palm started sweating like crazy, I was so nervous. It was awful." He winked at Ben. "Don't tell your mother."

 

"Tell me what, Edward Sweatyhands?" Leia asked, appearing from the kitchen, sitting down on the couch, and snuggling into Ben's side.

 

*

 

A few weeks after the third season finale of  _Awakening_ aired, Ben's old agent mailed him something square and thick and wrapped in brown paper. He opened it somewhat tentatively, and— it was a scrapbook, made by fans of the show, with messages in different handwriting collected from all over the world.  _Thank you,_ they said.  _We'll never forget._ He was blessed.

 

*

 

Another week later, it was raining. The lights in the den had been switched off, the only illumination coming from the flickering screen. Ben and Han were sharing a bowl of popcorn, watching  _Annapolis._

 

_"You want to know why I stay in this room?"_ said Twins.  _"'Cause, Jake, you're my Mississippi."_

 

_"I'm your what?"_ asked Jake Huard.

 

_"People who live in Arkansas, you know what their favorite state is? Mississippi. 'Cause Mississippi's the only thing that keeps Arkansas from being the worst state in the country."_

 

_"I'm Mississippi."_

 

_"Well, you sure as hell ain't California."_

 

Ben switched on the lamp and turned the TV off. He looked at his father, cleared his throat, and said, "How've you been, Dad?" He was sick of movies.

 

xvii.

 

Rey was having coffee at Maz's when she saw a YouTube clip of Kylo's last interview on Jessika's iPad. The host was one of the nicer ones, subtle and polite, but it was still all a ratings game in the end, so she finally steered the conversation to his love life— without, at least, mentioning either Rey or Tahiri.

 

Kylo laughed a little and deflected with some nice-sounding bullshit about how easy it was to get caught up in the girls in  _this industry,_ he'd met and worked with so many gorgeous, talented women—

 

_"Did you ever love any of them?"_ asked the host.

 

Rey leaned over Jessika's shoulder to peer intently at the screen.

 

Kylo glanced at the camera, then away. There was a soft, somewhat sad smile on his face.  _"One."_

 

*

 

The next time Rey saw Tahiri, it was at the opening of a swanky new club along West Hollywood.

 

Tahiri offered her a conspiratorial, dark-lipsticked smirk. "No hard feelings, right?"

 

And, wow, okay, that was kind of  _bitchy,_ but Rey plastered a neutral expression on her face. "It's none of my business. He and I were never together."

 

The smirk turned into a frown. "Hold up. What are you talking about?"

 

"What are  _you_ talking about?"

 

"The gossip, of course—"

 

They stared at each other in bewilderment, and then the cameras started flashing because Kylo Ren's two flames were face-to-face with easily throwable  _drinks_ in their hands and this was going to be  _good._

 

"Darling," Tahiri drawled, in a soft voice meant for Rey's ears alone, "I didn't sleep with him. I gave him coffee and he cried about you and then I kicked him out. Now, let's show these bastards how we do it in  _Hollywood."_ She draped a black-sleeved arm around Rey's shoulders and smiled for the paparazzi, and Rey, operating on autopilot, followed her cue.

 

"You're wearing stilettos, right?" Tahiri asked under her breath.

 

Rey grinned. "Hell yeah."

 

Casually, they elbowed through the mass of photographers. Tahiri pretended to stumble, splashing the contents of her wineglass on the vest of the most persistent one, causing him to drop his camera. "Oh, I'm  _so_ sorry," she called over her shoulder as she sailed away, and, when the man cursed and bent down, Rey—

 

— took _immense_ pleasure in digging her sharp, sharp heel into his fingers.

 

"Oops, didn't see you there," she said sweetly, as the man howled. "The lights were in my eyes."

 

*

 

_ Awakening  _ ended its run after four seasons, because, by then, Luke had finished telling the story that he wanted to tell.

 

"Sorry." He shrugged at the network executives, who were loathe to relinquish one of their biggest shows. "That's all she wrote."

 

*

 

They filmed the series finale in Ahch-To. The war was over, the dystopian government had been overthrown. The last shot was of  _ Daisy, John, Oscar,  _ and  _ Testor  _ standing on the edge of a cliff, gazing out over a sunlit blue sea as the camera slowly panned away.

 

"And... it's a wrap," Luke declared, with satisfaction.

 

"Oh, thank  _ God,"  _ groaned Poe. He dropped to one knee in front of Finn and fished a ring out of his jacket. "Will you marry me?"

 

Rey giggled and applauded along with everyone else, and, like, eat your heart out, Tinseltown— the  _ best _ moments happened in real life.

 

*

 

Han and Leia flew in for the wrap party, which was held at the resort that the cast and crew were staying at.

 

"Ben should be arriving soon," Rey heard Leia tell Luke, and her heart slammed against her ribcage. "He took the next flight out of Boston right after turning in his final papers."

 

"No rest for the wicked," said Luke jovially. "Or, in this case, the grad school student."

 

"And this must be Rey." Han didn't bother to wait for an introduction, practically rushing forward to shake her hand. He walked, she noticed, with a slight limp. "Hi, kid, I'm Ben's dad!"

 

"Um," was all Rey could manage, surprised by the fact that he was outright  _ beaming  _ at her with unbridled affection.

 

"Han, control yourself," Leia sighed, but she, too, smiled soppily at Rey when it was their turn to shake hands. "Oh, I'm so happy to meet you!"

 

"You  _ both  _ need to control yourselves," Luke muttered, shaking his head fondly at his twin sister and his best friend.

 

*

 

Rey knew by now that life was not a music video, but, sometimes, the stars just—  _ aligned. _

 

The sun was beginning to set over the Mediterranean, veiling the world in soft, sleepy colors. The resort staff had wound delicate beads of fairy lights around the palm trees, and their pale blue glow shimmered on the stiff, voluminous skirt of her strapless coral-hued gown as it twirled over the freshly-cut Bermuda grass.

 

Finn eyed the huge swatches of fabric with trepidation. "How do you even  _ move  _ in that thing?"

 

"I think my stylist hates me," Rey admitted.

 

But the considerable weight of the gown soon went forgotten as she laughed and danced with her friends and clinked champagne glasses to the conclusion of an admittedly  _ epic  _ chapter in their lives. There was a warm flush to her cheeks by the time she, Finn, Jessika, and Poe wandered to the edge of the garden and peered at the endless waters spread out below their feet, bursting into a new round of laughter when they realized that they were reenacting the last shot of  _ Awakening  _ in their formalwear.

 

And, like, BB must have taken over the DJ booth, because—

 

_He said, "Let's get out of this town, drive out of the city, away from the crowd." I thought, "Heaven can't help me now..."_

 

Finn and Poe looked absolutely delighted, and a tipsy, giddy Rey watched as the two of them tried to coax Jessika into belting along as well.

 

"If you don't like  _ 1989,  _ you're  _ lying,"  _ Poe declared.  _ "Say you'll remember me, standing in a nice dress, staring at the sunset, babe..." _

 

And, just as the final chorus burst through the sound system, Rey's castmates' eyes were suddenly widening at the sight of something over her shoulder. She blinked as Jessika grabbed Finn and Poe by the arms and hurried them away without another word, and she turned around and—

 

_Say you'll see me again—_

 

— and she was looking at Ben, in a pale gray suit, with his hands in his pockets and the sunset in his eyes. The breeze rippled through her skirts and tangled in his hair. The palm trees shone like pillars of light, as waves crashed against a nearby shore and the last line of the song faded into dusk and summer.

 

_ Even if it's just in your wildest dreams... _

 

xviii.

 

He had idly considered preparing a speech on the long flight over, but he nixed the idea because looking into someone's eyes while reciting words from memory would feel too much like his old life. But, now that she was actually standing in front of him, he wished he'd come up with an opening salvo, at  _ least,  _ because he was going to be  _ damned  _ if the first thing he said to her, after all this time, was,  _ Um, hi. _

 

Her chestnut hair was swept up in an elegant French twist, a style that emphasized her delicate features and those amazing,  _ beloved  _ eyes. Her gown was the color of the sunset, molded to her slender torso before flaring out in the rich, streaming panels of what was— quite frankly— a very intimidating skirt. In the dying light, at this salt-air height, she looked like she had been sculpted from fire, from gold, from half-remembered Grecian myth.

 

She frowned.

 

"You never told me you had a bachelor's degree in history," Rey said to Ben, after two years of radio silence, on the lush blue-green shores of Ahch-To. "I didn't even know you'd gone to university  _ at all." _

 

He nervously rocked back and forth on his heels. This was  _ not _ how he had thought the conversation would go. "First Order told me to downplay it. It was at odds with— you know, the  _ image." _

 

"Yeah," she mumbled, casting her gaze to the sea. "I know."

 

_ No, please,  _ he wanted to tell her.  _ Please don't look away, I've dreamed of your eyes for so long— _

 

But there were some moments that had to be  _ earned. _

 

He took one step closer. "I'm ready to tell you everything," he said. "I'm sorry it took me so long."

 

She nodded. "So, talk."

 

*

 

By the time he finished, the sky was a feathery blue-violet and the first stars had emerged. He was hoarse, laid bare, and all out of fight.

 

But she wasn't done with him yet. "One more thing." She'd hardly moved the whole time he spoke, her gaze fixed on the water that was now tossing up foam-capped waves of midnight. "Why did you let me believe that you had sex with Tahiri?"

 

"I thought that would make it easier for you to let me go," he admitted. "I thought that you wanting nothing to do with me was a punishment that I more than deserved."

 

"You punished  _ me,"  _ Rey hissed. "You made me feel betrayed for  _ months.  _ You made me feel  _ unloved.  _ Who the hell do you think you are?"

 

She sounded so heartsick and bitter and  _ tired.  _ The ruin fell like shadows on her face, and he almost couldn't breathe from the stabbing, ice-cold realization of just how badly he had hurt her. He'd been so afraid that the industry would turn her old before her time, but the real danger had come from him all along.

 

In the old films drifting through his mind, Anakin Skywalker was caught in the glare of judgement.  _ I am the wrath of God.  _ He was looking up after killing his wife and letting go of the high end of happiness.  _ You swore to serve your lord.  _ He was sulking at the camera, in an old, old interview.  _ Creation is violent.  _ He was ducking his head, in the last known photo ever taken, gazing moodily into the depths of a glass of bourbon at the Carrion Spike, while, all around him, the stars of the silver screen laughed and believed they were immortal.  _ He had simply caused too much pain. It burned away everything else that came after. _

 

"Rey." Even now, her name was a precious and holy thing, and Ben was unworthy to say it. "Look. We both know I had to leave, but what you  _ don't  _ know is that I almost chickened out— so many times. While we were filming the last few episodes of the third season, I considered— I  _ seriously  _ considered— telling Uncle Luke to change the ending, so I could stay on the show. But then—" Her eyes flickered back to him, and he offered her a wan, tremulous smile, before she returned her gaze to the sea. "Then I thought of you," he rasped. "Of the things you told me, from when you were younger. How you hitchhiked out of Omaha, and all the way along the West Coast. How you had the courage to just  _ go.  _ I wanted to be that brave."

 

He took another step towards her, because at least now she looked like she was minutes away from punching him, instead of mere seconds. "I wanted to be better. You made me  _ want  _ to be better. And I'm not sure if I'm there yet, but—" He fished his phone out of his pocket, and it shook in his trembling hand as he held the screen up to her. It was a picture of the two of them with Finn, Jessika, and Poe, in their costumes, after a long day on set; his castmates were shamelessly mugging for the camera while he was looking away and trying to hide a smile.

 

"This is the photo that's on my nightstand, in my apartment in Boston," he continued. "I put it in that tacky picture frame you gave me, and it  _ totally  _ clashes with the decor, but—" His nose was dripping and she was hiccuping, and this was so inelegant, and, God, like, the  _ farthest  _ thing from  _ Casablanca,  _ but he wouldn't have had it any other way. "I've wanted to be with you from the moment we met. I was an ass— probably still am, probably always will be— and I'll spend every single  _ day  _ making it up to you. If you'll have me."

 

His shoes were grazing the edges of her gown. One more step. One more step, and he'd be close enough to draw her into his arms. However, he was paralyzed by his own fear, by his own longing, by his heart in his throat. "I told you before," he murmured, "that you remind me of all the old movies, and that you made me dream of other lives. But, in the two years that we've been apart, I realized something." He took a deep breath, and it wasn't the kind of breath that you took before stepping in front of the cameras or walking through the main doors of event after event— it was that slow gulp of air that you needed, before you reached out your hands and held on to the rope and refused to let happiness go. "I want  _ this  _ life, too, Rey. And, yeah, you remind me of the past, but— you also make me wish for days that haven't happened yet. When I look at you, I miss the future. So—" She had pressed a palm to her mouth to muffle her sobs, even if she  _ still  _ wouldn't look at him, and a part of him yearned for nothing more than to turn back time and live his life all over again and make different choices until he could, like, meet her for the first time in Omaha or something, have her get to know him as someone kind and undamaged.

 

That wasn't the  _ point, _ though, was it? It was  _ this _ life, or nothing at all.

 

"You don't have to give me your answer now," he told her, and his voice sounded strange even to his own ears, more tender than it had ever been. "I can wait—"

 

"No," Rey suddenly said, as she turned to him against a backdrop of stars and lights and sea. She took his hand in both her impossibly fragile ones, and she pressed a kiss to his knuckles, staring up at him all the while. "I think we're both done waiting."

 

*

 

The party was winding down, the stream of bouncy pop and EDM and hiphop giving way to lilting acoustic ballads. Guitar strings thrummed and clinked in the air as Han, Leia, and Luke sipped wine and spoke of old friends, while, at another table, BB, Jessika, Finn, and Poe nibbled at the last of the appetizers and took goofy SnapChats.

 

A little further away, on the dew-damp lawn, beneath a silver net of Mediterranean constellations, Ben and Rey were slow-dancing to Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova's timeless, poignant duet. His hands were around her slim waist and her arms were around his neck, and he was leaning down so that their foreheads could touch. Their eyes were closed as they breathed each other in.

 

_Words fall through me and always fool me, and I can't react..._

 

"Hey, know what?" Poe mused, gesturing at the couple. "I didn't see that coming, but it makes sense."

 

Jessika flicked a table napkin at him. "You are, like,  _ shockingly  _ oblivious. I've half a mind to make you  _ eat  _ all these  _ spoons." _

 

Poe's brow creased. "Spoons?"

 

_You have suffered enough and warred with yourself. It's time that you won..._

 

Ben's grip tightened around Rey's waist. They pressed closer to each other, crushing the material of her skirt between them. And, although they were in public and people were sliding fond gazes their way, there were no questions, no cameras aimed at them. This moment was theirs alone.

 

_Take this sinking boat and point it home. We've still got time..._

 

*

 

_ "Falling slowly, eyes that know me, and I can't go back,"  _ Rey hummed under her breath as she and Ben went up the stairs of the hotel. He was trailing behind her, occassionally bending down to lift the hem of her heavy gown so that it wouldn't catch on the steps, and, yes, it made her think of the future, white lace and gold rings. Maybe someday. Who knew?

 

He seemed nervous once the door of her suite closed behind them, his hands finding their way back into his pockets and his dark eyes trained apprehensively on her after they had both kicked off their shoes. She held out her arms, and he walked towards them like a man in a dream.

 

Unfortunately— because this  _ wasn't  _ Rick and Ilsa in the rain, or Patrick serenading Kat on the bleachers, or Lloyd holding a boombox playing Peter Gabriel under Diane's bedroom window— Ben ended up stumbling on the folds of Rey's skirt. His long legs tangled in the yards of fabric, and, boy, did he go  _ down. _

 

She burst out laughing as he picked himself up off the mahogany floor, shoving aside waves of chiffon and faille and Crepe de Chine. "Jesus, this thing is  _ ridiculous,"  _ he muttered, blinking up at her, and her laughter caught in her throat because, in the suite's mood lighting, the sunset and coral panels of her gown were reflected on the odd angles of his face.

 

She turned her back to him, looking over her shoulder in a silent plea. And, oh, how those large hands of his shook as they removed the bobby pins from her hair and fumbled with the tiny zipper of her dress, how electric was the feel of his knuckles gliding down her bare spine. The zipper caught halfway through, and he  _ probably  _ would have been able to pry it loose a whole lot quicker— had he not gotten distracted with pressing soft, warm kisses to her shoulder-blades and lower, lower, to where the gown's bodice had fallen almost to her waist.

 

"We— really need— to talk about your attention span," Rey managed to say in between shaking hitches of breath, even as she leaned back into the movement of Ben's lips, and he chuckled, low and affectionate into her skin, and, shit, she felt the sound in her  _ heart. _

 

He eventually finished unzipping her, and the gown fell to the floor. It had been padded, so she was wearing only a lacy white thong when she turned around to face him, not even the least bit self-conscious even though he was still fully clothed. Those intense, star-cut eyes of his— that had glared at her in anger and rolled in derision and squinted in disbelief so many times over the years— those eyes were now roving over her, drinking her in from head to toe, and it felt like worship, it felt like music, it felt like rays of light.  _ Falling slowly. _

 

"Babe," she said, for no other reason except that she wanted to say it, and the sound of her voice was all that was needed to break the spell that he had fallen under and spur him into action.

 

She clutched at his sleeves when he swept her up in his embrace and slanted his lips over hers. It was a hard, desperate kiss that made her burn, that made warmth throb between her legs as his hands ran up and down her bare torso so frantically, like he couldn't make up his mind about what part of her to touch first. He nibbled at her bottom lip and rolled his tongue beneath the roof of her mouth, groaning low in the back of his throat and compulsively palming her thighs, her hips, her ass. She hadn't known that it could be this erotic, to be clad only in the barest shred of lace while the arms of a man in a tailored suit nearly lifted her off her feet, and she was  _ really  _ starting to get into it, when—

 

He broke the kiss in order to mouth at her neck, but, no sooner had he done this when he suddenly pulled back a little. His brown eyes were wide, the pupils blown out; his sensual lips were red and swollen, and he looked depraved and  _ dangerous  _ and it made her toes curl with excitement.

 

But—

 

"You smell the same." His voice was all broken with reverence and adoration, and, okay, now she just wanted to  _ cry _ from the realization of how badly he had missed her. It didn't cool her arousal, but it— softened it a little, took a bit of the edge off. There were still wounds between them, wounds that had to be caressed and loved away.

 

She closed her fingers around his tie and used it to gently tug him down to her, but he was still so  _ tall  _ that she had to surge up on her toes in order to kiss his forehead. He sighed in contentment, his eyes drifting shut, and she took her sweet time pressing her lips to every mole on his face, tracing a constellation that was his and hers alone. She was still holding on to his tie when she finally kissed that generous, sinful mouth, and the world tilted as he scooped her up like she weighed nothing at all.

 

Rey wrapped her arms around Ben's neck as he carried her to the bed. She giggled in his ear, and he moaned, "Oh, God, that  _ sound—  _ do it again."

 

"Make me," she teased, as he laid her down on the mattress.

 

He smirked, kneeling between her legs as he shrugged out of his suit jacket and unfastened his tie, carelessly tossing them to the floor, and soon he was taking her up on the challenge, playfully rubbing his scruff into her neck while she squealed from the ticklish sensation.

 

Eventually, his jaw found its way to the valley between her breasts. This time, her giggle spiked into a sharp gasp as he started kissing one breast, while his large, warm hand cupped the other.

 

_ "Ben,"  _ she whimpered, tangling her fingers in his dark hair.

 

He took her nipple into his mouth, sucking it between his lips, swirling his tongue over the pebbled peak. The hand on her other breast wasn't idle, either; it kneaded and strummed and  _ pinched,  _ until she felt like she was being strung out on white-hot waves of pleasure, the ceiling blurring as her lashes fluttered and Ben's hips rolled against hers.

 

"I could do this forever," he surprised her by murmuring into her breast as he peppered it with a new round of kisses, and,  _ God,  _ of course he'd be a talker, she would have laughed if her brain wasn't short-circuiting from the combination of his gravelly voice and the way he was gently tweaking her other nipple between forefinger and thumb. "I could use my mouth on you until the end of  _ time—" _

 

"Mouth," she echoed, which, yeah, wasn't her finest moment, but it was the one word she could latch on to. "Kiss me."

 

He immediately complied, propping himself up on his elbows as his lips captured hers. It wasn't long before his hand wandered between their bodies and rubbed her through the lace of her thong, and she almost cried out into his mouth.

 

"You're so wet, sweetheart," he whispered, as if in awe, as he stroked and ground against her. "You're going to get it all over my pants—"

 

Her thighs snapped tighter around his hips. She was going to lose her  _ mind  _ before all this was over, that was what she was going to do.

 

He was kissing her temple and she was blindly digging her nails into his shirtsleeve when he finally,  _ finally  _ pushed aside her thong and slid his long, thick fingers into her. She was so needy for him, so drowned in the sensation, that she could do nothing but hold on to his broad shoulders and cant her hips,  _ more, please, deeper. _

 

"I've dreamed of this for so long," he mumbled, his lips fluttering at the corner of her eye as she gasped and shuddered beneath him. "I've dreamed of making you feel good like this for so long. I'm so sorry for everything, I'll make it up to you, I promise." His thumb pressed  _ down _ and his fingers started thrusting more insistently, building her up, higher and higher. "Come on, beautiful, let me feel you come, please? I'll do anything you want. I'll give you everything." His lips dropped to her cheek, and then to the tip of her nose. "Just, please, come for me—"

 

And that was how she fell apart, with butterfly kisses and words of love, the room a blaze of lamplight and stardust. He nibbled at her jaw and soothed her through her aftershocks, and, once the ringing in her ears had faded, once her heartbeat had returned to a semblance of normalcy, he kissed her again, all languid and warm.

 

She couldn't help but smile lazily up at him as she coaxed them both into a sitting position, with her straddling his lap as she started undoing the buttons on his shirt. He grinned back at her, that same old boyish grin that was too wide, that spread his features out too strangely, but she loved that smile for the years that it melted away.

 

And, okay, maybe  _ her  _ attention span needed some work, too, because it took, like,  _ three seconds _ for her to abandon his buttons in favor of kissing him senseless. He didn't even seem to mind; he seemed content just to kiss her back. They were  _ never  _ going to get anything done if they kept getting distracted by each other's lips.

 

Rey  _ eventually  _ managed to get Ben out of his shirt; it was his turn to gasp and arch as her mouth made its way down his neck, her hands running over his broad chest and the defined muscles of his abdomen. He was hard and throbbing in his pants that, yes, were damp and dark from where she was rubbing herself against him, the friction so delicious that it wasn't long before she was moaning and babbling incoherent words into his clavicle, words that sounded like  _ now  _ and  _ need  _ and  _ yes. _

 

She unfastened his belt and worked him free of his pants and his boxers, and, oh, the strangled sounds he made when she wrapped her fingers around him, how fiercely he kissed her then. He was thrusting up into her hand and saying her name over and over again, rambling sloppily against her lips about how good it felt, about how much he wanted her, until his voice filled her world and burned away everyone else who came before.

 

She was still wearing her thong, but garments like that had been made with passion in mind, anyway, and soon he had pushed the soaking wet lace to the side and was guiding her onto him, his hands on her hips and his tongue laving at her breasts. She whimpered as she sank down, and he nuzzled at her neck and nipped at the column of her throat until he was buried to the hilt inside her.

 

_ "Fuck,"  _ he groaned, and her heart gave a pleasant little jolt at that, at how she could still elicit vulgarities him even when he was trying to be so careful with her. She experimentally swirled her hips, signaling that she was ready, that she'd adjusted around him, and he immediately crushed her to his chest and started rocking into her. "Baby, sweetheart, I'm yours, anything you want," he murmured nonsensically in her ear as she shivered and soared with the feeling of skin on skin, and breath and worship.  _ Falling slowly. _

 

And, when the heat building inside her made the gentle pace unbearable—

 

"Harder," Rey whispered, almost too afraid to ask it, lest she destroy a moment so fragile.  _ "Harder,  _ Ben."

 

He kissed the tip of her nose before lowering her onto the mattress, and he smoothed away loose strands of hair from her forehead and kissed her there as well before pulling back. She whined at the loss of him, and— because he was still a jerk, after all— he chuckled softly at her pout as he rid himself of his pants, his boxers, and his socks. When he slid her thong down her legs, he trailed a path of kisses from her hips to her thighs to her knees to her ankles, and Rey was dizzy with it, she'd never before felt this adored and this sacred.

 

He entered her again, and the new angle allowed him leeway to snap his hips against hers. God, it should have been obscene, the wet slaps, the primal grunts that filled the hotel room, but he was dropping kisses on every part of her that his mouth could reach, and her fingers were scaling the ladder of his ribs, and how could it have been anything less than intimate and beautiful and better than she'd ever dreamed—

 

When he felt her shudder around him, he slid his hand to where they were joined and languorously began to bring her to her second peak. "You are so tight," he panted, and her breath hitched anew and she closed her eyes, "so perfect, so hot, so  _ mine—" _

 

He continued thrusting into her as she came, and she didn't know how her boneless arms found the energy to wrap around his neck, how her light-filled fingers managed to card through his hair as the movement of his hips grew more erratic, signaling that he was close.

 

"Rey," he begged, in a hoarse voice, "sweetheart, love, open your eyes— want to see your eyes—"

 

She gave him what he wanted. He was looking into her eyes when he spent himself inside her.

 

_Falling slowly._

 

coda

 

It was a year later, and Massachusetts was draped in crimson and gold beneath a blue-gray sky.

 

Dead leaves swirled in the air, and Ben couldn't stop himself from smirking when one hit Rey in the face as they strolled through the park. She batted the offending foliage away and glared at him for good measure, before returning her attention to her agent on the phone.

 

"I  _ know  _ it's a huge role," she snapped, "but it's First Order, and I'm simply  _ not  _ interested in working with them—  _ no,  _ there will not be a  _ pre-meeting meeting,  _ I can't, anyway, I'm in Boston— what?" She stopped in her tracks, pressing the phone closer to her ear, and Ben leaned down to kiss the crease on her brow. She scrunched her freckled nose at him and raked her fingers through his already windswept hair.  _ "Who the hell goes to Boston?"  _ she echoed, with something like amazement. "A lot of people come here! I mean,  _ Harvard  _ is here, isn't it— anyway, I won't be back until next Friday, but I'm still not going to meet with Snoke even if there were no other roles left in Coruscant—"

 

The agent continued prattling away, and Rey grimaced as she absentmindedly fixed the scarf around Ben's neck. He was happy to stand still and let her do it, and even happier to let her use it to tug him down so she could nuzzle his nose with hers. "Yes, yes, confirm the magazine shoot," she sighed into her phone, "but nowhere near the week of December 25, because I'm spending Christmas in New York with my boyfriend and his family— oh, and, before I forget— I can't go to that Halloween gala, either, my boyfriend and I are visiting my cousins in Nebraska—"

 

Ben pulled her into a hug, resting his chin on the top of her head and wondering if his heart would ever stop skipping a beat every time she referred to him as  _ her boyfriend. _ "Well," she huffed to the person on the other end of the line, "if it bothers you so much that I can't stay in one place, maybe you should just find  _ someone else  _ to represent— oh, my God, no, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that, please don't  _ cry—" _

 

Ben started laughing. Rey slapped his arm. "You aren't fired, don't be ridiculous— laughing?" She slapped his arm again, more furiously this time, in an effort to get him to shut up. "No, no one's laughing at you, my boyfriend's just— choking on a fishbone— actually, I have to give him the Heimlich now, so I'll talk to you later! Remember,  _ no  _ meeting with Snoke! Not even a pre-meeting luncheon. Not even a pre-meeting  _ coffee—  _ okay,  _ seriously  _ have to go now, bye—"

 

She ended the call and burrowed her face in Ben's coat, clinging to him until his laughing fit subsided. She always held him every time he had an odd, untoward burst of mirth, every time he pushed out splinters of the past from his lungs.

 

"You're such an asshole, babe," she grumbled into his chest, once he had calmed down.

 

"And you really  _ do  _ deserve that SAG award," he teased. "I mean—  _ 'oh, gotta go, my boyfriend's choking on a fishbone!'" _

 

"Ugh!" She tore herself away from him and stomped off.

 

"Baby, wait," he called, hurrying after her, "I thought you had to give me the Heimlich—"

 

"Heimlich yourself, Solo!" she retorted, without turning around.

 

But she leaned into his side once he caught up to her and wrapped an arm around her waist. He pressed a loud kiss to her temple as they continued walking beneath the fiery trees, bathed in silver light and the scarlet fumes of autumn. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And... it's a wrap ;)
> 
> This, I think, is my favorite modern AU that I've ever written in any fandom. I'm so happy that you guys gave it a chance and that you were all so enthusiastic about it and that we geeked out together over the highs and lows of Hollywood. I have a [Tumblr](http://kylorenvevo.tumblr.com/) if you'd like to get in touch, and I fill out [prompts](http://kylorenvevo.tumblr.com/tagged/reylo) in between longer projects, too.
> 
> Until we meet again! <3


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